


Captive

by starstruck1986



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-03
Updated: 2015-05-24
Packaged: 2017-12-31 08:57:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 20
Words: 77,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1029786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starstruck1986/pseuds/starstruck1986
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every day is a test of their strength, willpower, and the desire to save their own skins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Captive  
 **Pairing/Characters:** (eventual) Ron Weasley / Severus Snape, mentioned past Severus Snape / OFC  
 **Rating:** NC-17 for whole fic, R for this chapter  
 **Content / Warnings:** Story warnings: Dark!fic, EWE, Canon compliant to the end of DH but Snape didn't die, Resurgent fic; _Chapter warnings: angst, torture, mutilation, gore, non-con sexual abuse, mentioned past heterosexual activity._  
 **Word Count for this chapter:** ~3,575  
 **Summary:** Every day is a test of their strength, willpower, and the desire to save their own skins.  
  


** Captive **

  
  
  
_She was soft beneath his fingers. He tried to remember the last time he'd felt someone like that, so intimately. She moved against him and pressed their bodies together. A deep flush coloured his cheeks; it was even longer since someone had willingly been so close to him and intent on making him happy.  
  
Happy. He almost laughed at the thought. She was all he had, though, and he wasn't cruel enough to laugh in the middle of sex. He knew her well enough to know that she would interpret as a slight on her appearance or ability, pull away and most likely burst into tears. No, Severus could not do that to her, not when she was good enough to not ask questions, to not comment on the injuries, healing cuts and old scars. Not when she was good enough to be with him full stop. He curled his arms around her and smoothed his outstretched hands over her back. Her moan was breathy and surprised. Severus felt her stare upon him as she pulled back, looking at him, waiting for an explanation for the sudden contact.  
  
“Kiss me,” he muttered, closing his eyes and cursing the way his cheeks burned even hotter under her scrutiny.  
  
She did as he asked and he went as she pushed him onto his back, straddling his groin, landing with a heavy thump. Severus hissed as the dampness of her parted labia settled over his cock, and gave his hips a gentle rock to deepen the sensation. He allowed his larger hands to cover hers as she laced their fingers together and pressed them into the pillow, level with his head. Her hair fell forward into both of their faces and Severus nosed at it, enjoying the silken feel and the feminine scent.  
  
Severus closed his eyes as she reached down to fumble between them, prising his cock up before sinking down on it. He held his breath until he was fully sheathed within her and then exhaled with a groan.  
  
“I think I might love you, Severus Snape.”_  
  
Jolting awake on the hard concrete floor, Severus found himself panting. Blood thundered in his ears and he tried to anchor himself to reality – but that was hard when he desperately hated his reality and would rather have stayed asleep. He immediately wrapped his arms around his chest, trying to stop it aching. He had been forced to acknowledge the fact that at thirty-eight, he'd seen far more injuries than most and that the damp, cold air of their cell was slowly killing him. The wheeze in his breath seemed to strengthen with every passing day. A shiver ran through him and he drew his knees up towards his body.  
  
“Morning.” The voice from his right was sarcastic. “Sleep well?”  
  
Severus didn't bother to waste his breath in responding but rolled his head in Ronald Weasley's direction and stared at him. His mouth tasted vile and made him want to gag, but he didn't look to the door to see if there had been any water left just inside it.  
  
“Who were you dreaming about?” The redhead asked, crossing his legs at the ankle. He too was sitting with his arms hugging his torso trying to fight off the cold. Severus cast an eye over the soles of the boy's feet, which were black with filth.  
  
 _Boy. He's a man._  
  
“You were having a good time at any rate,” Ron went on when he got no answer. “Someone should, I s'pose.”  
“Just... someone I knew long ago.” Severus hated the way his vocal chords seemed to grate over the words. His damaged throat was only worsened further by the cold air of the cell. “Someone I cared for.”  
“Harry's mum?”  
  
Severus closed his eyes and mourned the absence of his temper. There had once been a time when the youngest Weasley male would never have crossed him, unless in a temper of his own, but now it seemed as though no question was too personal, and no topic of conversation was off limits. Yet, after the hell they had been through together, Severus couldn't blame Ron for descending into conversation with him like he would have with one of his familiars – one of his friends.  
  
“I don't know whether to tell you yes and shatter the illusion that my love for her kept me faithful to a woman I could never have, or to tell you the truth so that you can add another point to your list of reasons why you loathe me?”  
“How do you do that?” Ron asked incredulously.  
“What?”  
“Wake up such a grumpy old bastard?” Ron laughed and shook his head.  
“I was born with the talent,” Severus responded, and then yawned. His stomach gave a rumble which seemed amplified in the quiet room.  
“They're late this morning,” Ron said glumly. “No food, no water. No nothing. Like you said.”  
  
The problem with being captured by those that he had once been in allegiance with, Severus found, was that he knew their tricks. It made it doubly hard to know that the food wouldn't come, and neither would the water, and that they would be allowed to simply just starve and waste away.  
  
“She was somebody who had the misfortune to fall in love with me,” he said, trying to change the subject and distract them both from the thought of absent nourishment. “I haven't thought of her for years... I don't know why I dreamt of her.”  
  
He waited for some kind of comment, some kind of mocking, but it didn't come. When he glanced at Ron he looked oddly vulnerable against the grotty cell wall. Something in his eyes had softened and there was no definition to his lips – no smirk as Severus had been expecting. The redhead's grip on his upper body tightened and his knuckles bleached white.  
  
“What?” Severus asked finally.  
“Nothing.”  
“Oh, don't be coy, say what you're thinking. Let me hazard a guess – wondering how a woman could ever find someone like myself attractive enough to fall in love with? That she must have been a complete troll herself?”  
“No,” Ron said quietly.  
“Because she wasn't,” Severus went on, not really hearing him. “She was beautiful. And she loved me because she saw past some of the physical imperfections which you place so much store upon.”  
“I wasn't thinking that.”  
“She was one of the most beautiful people I ever knew.”  
“I WASN'T THINKING ANY OF THAT!” Ron hurled across the small space, and his voice echoed in it.  
  
Severus stopped, his mouth open, wondering why he'd been so content to batter the younger man around the head with words he'd put in his mouth.  
  
“I was thinking-”  
  
Ron abruptly broke off as the door swung open with a loud squeal and they both looked towards it. In their squabble they hadn't heard the approaching footsteps. Severus forced himself to sit upright and sensed that Ron had done the same.  
  
“What's this? Lover's tiff?” A masked man spoke to them – Severus tried hard to distinguish who the speaker was, but the voice rang no bells. It didn't surprise him that there might be new blood within the ranks. The Dark Lord might have gone but his cause had not died.  
  
If it had, they wouldn't be sharing the cell together.  
  
“You're wanted, anyway. Sorry to break up the argument. Up.”  
Severus was grateful that whoever the man was did not grow impatient as he tried to force his stiff joints to work. He put one hand on the wall and managed to avoid the embarrassing hand that Ron offered him. The redhead immediately shoved both of his wrists out once Severus was vertical, waiting for them to be bound.  
  
It seemed to take less and less time for their captors to bind their hands and temporarily blind them with each visit, Severus thought. He bumped slightly into Ron's shoulder as the darkness swamped him. They were of a height, just another thing which made their tiny cell even more unbearable. He walked when the chains attached to his own wrists were yanked. Hesitating had never gained either of them anything welcome before and they both knew it was better to just walk where they were led, knowing that if one fell, at least the other could not see it.  
  
His feet were like ice as they set off down the long hallway. Severus hoped that Ron was trying to commit the route to memory, as he had advised, just in case they should ever have the opportunity to escape. He didn't really expect their captors to be that stupid, but there was always a hope. A hope which shrunk a little more with each passing day, but a hope nonetheless. He stumbled slightly as the man stopped more quickly than either of them expected. Severus listened to the sound of another door opening and the way that voices hushed when they were herded inside. The door closed again and he felt the manacles around his wrists vanish. He blinked as his vision was returned to him. His heart sunk when he saw the size of the crowd in the chamber they had been deposited in. Instinctively he inched closer to Ron and appreciated the warmth which came from the redhead's side as they met.  
  
“My my, Severus, how far the mighty are fallen, eh?” someone called from within the crowd.  
  
He knew the voice but didn't care to put a face or name to it. He stared straight ahead to where the newly elected leader of the pureblood cause sat upon a throne-like chair.  
  
“Have you given my request some thought?” Rodolphus Lestrange spoke, and immediately the room fell silent. Severus wondered how the man who had licked the proverbial windows in Azkaban for so many years had garnered so much power. He sat looking every bit as mad as he had whilst incarcerated, with tangled hair and filthy skin, his hands sporting nails with deep grime beneath them. He forced a smile at them, bearing his blackened teeth, as he waited for an answer that neither of them were foolish enough to give.  
  
“No?” he asked, eyebrows raised. “Nothing at all? Not even the slightest little _urge_ to tell us where he is?”  
  
Again, neither of them spoke and someone spat at their feet.  
  
“Well. Severus... your tongue used to drip information for the dear departed Dark Lord. What will it take for you to sing for me like you used to sing for him, I wonder?”  
  
Rodolphus eased off his chair, his limp pronounced as he came towards them. It took all of Severus' willpower not to lean back as the wizard got right up close to him, their noses only millimetres apart.  
  
“What will I have to _do_ to you, more like...” Rodolphus whispered. Severus smelt spirits on his breath. “How fucking hard will I have to torture you to break you?”  
  
His mad stare was unnerving but Severus did not dare break it once he had met it. There were bright flecks of a yellowish colour in Rodolphus' eyes. Eventually the man looked away and turned his attention to Ron.  
  
“And you...” he breathed, reaching up and grabbing Ron around the throat, so tightly that his fingers drained of colour. “Your filthy bitch of a mother killed my wife. I will take _immense_ pleasure in making you crack, Weasley.”  
  
The room filled with laughter as Rodolphus moved impulsively, forcing his lips onto the 18-year-old's mouth. Severus held his breath but was relieved when Ron did not step back, did not fight. With one hand still around Ron's throat, Rodolphus let his free hand drop and ground the palm into his captive's crotch.  
  
“I'm going to have so much fun with you,” he whispered, before pulling back, leaving Ron to stagger backwards at the force of his release. “With you both, actually. If I can't make you talk by locking you in a miserable little room together and starving you... then we'll see what a little... _persuasion_ does to, ah, persuade you.”  
  
Severus braced himself when Rodolphus nodded to those who had crowded behind them once the door had been shut. He realised then that the room was actually quite small and that it only seemed so full because it was tiny. There couldn't have been more than fifteen witches and wizards – mainly wizards – crowded within the chamber. Was that all the Dark Lord's force had been reduced to? Or were there more, hiding, waiting, doing dark work for a dark man, waiting for the right time to come into the open?  
  
All thoughts of the size of the resurgent party, however, were chased from his mind as he was forced to stand opposite Ron who had paled to the point where even his freckles were translucent. It was then that Severus saw him vulnerable again – frightened and shaking, and his heart went out to Ron.  
  
 _He's no younger than you were when you first joined... when you first experienced things like this..._ A cruel voice reminded him.  
  
Severus had to concede, though, that he had never been forced to be a victim of such scenes. He had only ever taken part as a voyeur, or in the worst case, a torturer. His stomach turned just thinking of it. A glint of something shiny caught his eye then and saw a knife being passed through the small crowd, until Rodolphus took it. Someone grabbed Severus' wrist and forced it out in front of him, palm facing the ceiling.  
  
“How are you with blood, Weasley?” Rodolphus smirked, stepping closer and pushing the knife at Ron, who fumbled to catch it before it fell down and landed on his own feet. “Does it make you sick? Why don't we find out?”  
“W-what?” Ron spoke his first word; Severus had rather hoped he would hear more steel there than he did.  
“What good is it me causing him pain? You probably don't give a flying fuck about him. Nobody else ever has,” Rodolphus tagged cheerily onto the end. “Who could? A face only a mother could love and even that was probably only out of pity. Bringing his foul, stinking body into the world. She probably wished she'd drowned him in a river the second he'd come out of her cunt. I know I would have, if my wife had given birth to him. Foul, half-blood scum.”  
  
Severus did not move as Rodolphus spat in his face. It slid disgustingly down the side of his nose. The insults hastened his pulse but he kept his face impassive. Ron was staring dumbly down at the knife in his hand.  
  
“So, pick a finger, any finger,” Rodolphus said, his tone jolly. “And chop it off. Else I'll make you wish you hadn't been born.”  
  
Ron's eyes went wide with horror and he immediately shook his head. “No. I won't.”  
“You won't? The iddy biddy blood traitor says shan't!” The room filled with laughter. “You will. Maybe by force at first... but when you've had enough of what I'll do to you if you don't, you'll be begging me for the knife, Weasley.”  
  
Ron shook his head again and made to chuck the knife aside, but suddenly paused. Severus glanced up and recognised the blank look in his eyes. Rodolphus had his wand out and was smirking again. Severus clenched his jaw and shut his eyes, knowing what was coming. The knife stung as it dug into the tender flesh between his hand and his littlest left finger. Fire razed through the flesh and tendon and he fought back sick as the knife worked harder to cut through the density of his bone before separating digit from palm completely. He heard the knife clatter to the floor and then a hoarse cry of shock from Ron. He opened his eyes and saw the boy's own hand, bloody and limp, and then looked down at his own. He tried to fight the feeling of dizziness as it swamped him. There was a loud retch and the warm contents of Ron's mostly empty stomach landed on his bloodied feet.  
  
 _You've seen far worse, felt worse. It is nothing._  
  
“You haven't lost your touch, Severus,” Rodolphus advised. “As straight backed as ever. Call me impressed.” He genially put both of his hands out. “So... will you tell me where Potter is now?”  
  
He looked between them, from Ron to Severus, though his face held no real trace of expectation. When neither of them spoke, he laughed, and turned away.  
  
“Put them back in their pit for now. Heal his wound to the point where there'll be no infection and then leave them. Let's see what another two days of hunger and fear do to them.”  
  
The darkness came again and Severus winced as his hands were tied, his bleeding hand aching with the motion. He walked when prodded and did not stop concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other until he heard the door to their cell open. Someone performed a basic cleaning charm on the hole where his little finger had once been, which stung like hell, and Severus then recognised the spell which knitted the skin together. It burned. His vision returned shortly before the door slammed shut. A window high up in the cell cast down weak light on them both. Severus slumped to the floor, cradling his hand to his chest, running his fingers over the wound.  
  
Ron stayed standing and silent, but Severus knew he was looking at him.  
  
“Sit down,” he muttered finally, when the gaze grew too heavy for him to bear.  
  
Ron did as he was told, but far too close for Severus' general comfort. Without speaking, he placed his own freezing hands around Severus' wrist and pulled the maimed hand close to his face to inspect it in the poor light.  
  
“I'm-”  
“Don't you dare say you're sorry,” Severus spat, not wanting to hear it. “You do whatever they fucking tell you to do to keep your skin safe, do you hear me?”  
“But I-”  
“A finger is nothing compared to what they can do to us. I count myself lucky. You should too.”  
  
Severus thought he heard something which sounded suspiciously like a sniff and ground his teeth.  
  
“And save your tears for when they've got you begging for mercy, Weasley. Trust me, you won't like the part that follows when your body has run out of them.”  
  
He snatched his hand back from the redhead's grasp and tucked it into his chest again. Ron said nothing, but there were several deep gulps of air and Severus could feel him shaking through the minimal body contact that their legs shared. It was only when Severus heard chattering teeth that he remembered how Rodolphus had touched the young man sitting next to him – how he had forcedly kissed him. There had been much implied by those actions. Pain and torture were one thing, but the hint at sexual abuse would have been enough to fell many men much stronger than Ronald Weasley. The redhead would suffer for the fact that his mother had killed Rodolphus Lestrange's wife, in a way that Severus could all too well remember from the past.  
  
“I was thinking that it must be nice to have somebody love you,” Ron said quietly, after several minutes had passed.  
“What?” Severus frowned, completely lost.  
“Before... when you were talking about that woman you were with. You thought I was laughing at you. But I was just thinking how nice it must have been to have someone who loved you. Wanted to make you happy. Fucked you.”  
  
Severus sat open-mouthed in the dim light.  
  
“I'm going to get fucked by Rodolphus _fucking_ Lestrange,” Ron said, his tone straying towards mild hysteria. Severus was just glad that he didn't have to explain what the man's actions had meant. “Merlin's fucking arse.”  
  
“He might not go that far.” Severus sighed, trying to ignore all scathing comments about Ron's choice of words which sprang to mind. “Not if you crack first and tell him...”  
“I'll _never_ tell him where Harry is,” Ron said vehemently. “He can do what he likes to me.”  
“He will. He's a psychopath.”  
  
Ron might have shrugged, but it was too dark for Severus to see. He heard a small exhale of air and Ron shuffling against the wall.  
  
“What happened to her? The woman who loved you?” he asked finally.  
  
Severus swallowed and dared to gently press the tip of a finger to his still-healing stub.  
  
“They killed her,” he said. “They found out that I was seeing her... and they killed her. It was quick, they didn't play with her. But she died and she had so much to give.”  
  
Cold fingers suddenly clutched at his thigh and did not release. The pressure hurt but Severus could not bring himself to push Ron away. Instead, he lowered his good hand and covered the chilled flesh with his own.  
  
 _To be continued..._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “They said with the Dementors that a life without a soul is a life worse than death.”

**Rating:** NC-17 for whole fic, R for this chapter  
 **Content / Warnings:** Story warnings: Dark!fic, EWE, Canon compliant to the end of DH but Snape didn't die, Resurgent fic; _Chapter warnings: angst, mentioned torture, mutilation, gore, non-con sexual abuse; implied other character peril._  
 **Word Count for this chapter:** ~3,616  
 **Summary:** **Every day is a test of their strength, willpower, and the desire to save their own skins.** >> _“They said with the Dementors that a life without a soul is a life worse than death.”_  
  


**Chapter Two**

  
“Damn you,” Severus hissed, looking at the stones which lay between them on their makeshift chessboard.  
  
The pieces were lumps of rock, tile, grout – anything they could forage for from the walls of their cell. They were labelled with the first letter of their name, daubed grotesquely in dried blood. It had turned his stomach when Ron had first suggested it on returning from a session with their captors, but Severus had to admit, the game gave them something to do. Often there was too little light in their pit to see anything, but when they could, they played their depressed little version of chess. Much to his utter disbelief, Ron continued to wipe the floor with him.  
  
“Who would've guessed that you were hiding such a clever little brain inside that thick skull?” He huffed and slumped back against the cell wall.  
  
Ron's outline was barely visible against the opposite wall. They'd managed to finish in the fading light, just in time. Nothing irritated them more than getting caught in the middle of a game, losing sight, and then accidentally knocking the pieces whilst they slept. There wasn't enough room to swing a cat in the cell, considering that Severus stood comfortably at 6'2” and Ron matched him, if not edging slightly taller. Both of them had to bend their knees to sleep and the floor was unforgiving to their bones. And if one of them accidentally kicked the piss pot in the corner after it had been used... Severus winced at the reminder.  
  
 _You've had worse._ The little voice in his head seemed to be growing louder with each passing day. He wondered sometimes if Ron spoke to himself in the same way. The redhead seemed to have withdrawn as keenly as Severus' inner self grew more prominent. He snorted slightly, thinking how very similar they both were, that they should both internalise.  
  
“What?” Ron asked, picking up on the nasal huff. Severus heard him sweep all of the pieces to lie along the bottom of the wall, so that they would simply look like debris should anyone enter the room. They had contemplated drawing a grid of blood on the floor but knew it would be spotted and they would either lose their makeshift chess pieces or be separated.  
  
Oddly, the thought of being separated from his 18-year-old cellmate made Severus queasy. He would never have selected him as a companion in a million years, but left without a choice in the matter he was forced to concede that it could have been worse. There were many things about Ron that infuriated him, but there were a good deal more which had been a comfort. His habit of emitting eternal heat, even when his teeth were chattering, was one.  
  
“Just slowly going mad,” Severus said finally.  
“Surprised it's taken you this long.” Ron gave a snort of his own. “I've been out of my mind for days.”  
“You hide it well.”  
“Not so much that... just maybe I've always been a little bit mad. Think I get it from my dad.”  
  
Severus said nothing and waited for him to continue. They existed in a world of silence where neither of them really talked about the present, or those that they missed, unless they were from the distant past. Memories were easier to peruse, Severus assumed, than the reality that was carrying on without them outside of their little prison.  
  
“My dad has a collection of over two hundred Muggle plugs, did you know that?” Ron asked.  
“Certainly, he showed them to me one year.”  
“Really?”  
  
Severus laughed in disbelief.  
  
“Git,” Ron muttered.  
“Oh, come on.” Severus shook his head. “Your family does not like me, has never liked me. Each of your siblings has created their own special brand of hell for me as a teacher, starting with the eldest right down to the youngest, and you were no different. I might have worked alongside your parents as a part of the Order, but do you really think I was ever welcome around the dinner table for dinner? More than a polite cup of tea during a meeting?”  
“Maybe if you'd've made an effort, they would've,” Ron pointed out. “You never exactly tried.”  
“Why should I have? None of them trusted me as far as they could throw me, and might I include yourself in that? Lupin and Black never sought to make amends with me. No, all anybody ever wanted from me was to keep dangling from the Dark Lord's arm and behave myself whilst doing it. And I did it. I saw no need to forge friendships. I was never there for anybody but Dumbledore.”  
“And Harry,” Ron said shrewdly.  
“Well... that was a reason, yes. But not my only reason.”  
“What were the others?”  
“None of your bloody business is what they were,” Severus snapped, anger surging through his bloodstream.  
  
He took a few deep breaths and closed his eyes. Resentment would not make their situation any easier. A full scale argument would bring their captors running and bring Merlin-only-knew what down upon their heads. He balled his good hand into a fist and squeezed hard.  
  
“Anyway. Who says that in a war everyone on the same side needs to be bosom friends?” he said finally, keeping his voice low, so that Ron could not sense the emotion there. “As long as they all strive towards the same goal, than what does it matter if they never know each other from Adam?”  
“True,” Ron admitted. Severus saw him nod his head in the fading light. “Its easier, sometimes... if you don't feel anything for anyone.”  
  
His voice was thick with sentiment and Severus wondered whether he should ask, question the boy like he himself had been questioned. He closed his mouth again when he realised that he truly didn't give a flying Bowtruckle about Ron's feelings, or what he had been through, or what the war had meant to him.  
  
 _You're an evil old bastard. Give him an inch, why don't you? Give him some fucking comfort, like he gave you._  
  
Severus swallowed on a dry throat, remembering the way that the redhead had tenderly tried to help him in the aftermath of their first encounter with the knife.  
  
 _A little kindness..._  
  
Against his judgement and completely against his nature, Severus turned to face Ron in the half-darkness.  
  
“Is there anything you would like to talk about?”  
“Eh?” Ron asked, clearly surprised.  
“Do. You. Want. To. Talk. About. Anything?” Severus punctured the words sarcastically.  
“Like what?”  
  
Severus could see the bemused look on the freckled face even though it was dark.  
  
“You are eighteen years old. And from what I remember, not one to handle stress very well, nor emotional torture.”  
“What're you on about?” Ron demanded.  
  
Cruelly, Severus hummed the chorus line to 'Weasley is our King' beneath his breath and waited for the reaction.  
  
“Fuck you,” Ron spat contemptuously, and said no more.  
  
Severus listened to the rustling of Ron's scanty, filthy robe as the boy rearranged himself to lie down facing the wall closest to him. He waited for his breath to even out, for him to fall asleep, but nothing changed, and he inwardly sighed.  
  
***  
“Ron, wake up,” Severus hissed. He reached out his hand and roughly shook the teenager's shoulder. “Wake up, now. Ron!”  
  
There was a groan and Ron rolled back towards him, so closely that their noses collided. Severus hissed in pain and tried to pull back, but one of Ron's fists had grabbed the front of his robe in surprise.  
  
“Someone's coming,” Severus whispered, leaning down to Ron's ear.  
“How long have I been asleep?” Ron mumbled, his mouth gummed up with slumber.  
“All night. It's morning,” Severus glanced up at the narrow window high in their cell. “But I wanted to warn you... to give you time...  
  
 _To brace yourself? To wake up? To see what's coming for you today?_  
  
The acrid stench of Ron's breath wafted up into his face and Severus blanched. He couldn't remember the last time he'd brushed his own teeth, so the boy's breath should not have been a surprise. Perhaps what surprised him most was Ron remaining in such close proximity to him, willingly. The fist in the front of his robes suddenly loosened and hovered in mid-air between them.  
  
“Thanks,” Ron said, voice still husky. “For waking me up.”  
  
Severus straightened up and brushed his hair out of his eyes. Ron struggled to a sitting position and shook his head like a dog. He immediately gave a shudder which came out through his lips.  
  
“Why is it so fucking cold in here?” he asked, jaw tight.  
“It's been like it all night. I'm wondering whether they've put a cooling charm on it.”  
“Cunts,” Ron said, matter-of-factly, and shuddered again.  
  
Severus couldn't help the bitter laugh which escaped his mouth in agreement. Before he could offer further verbal support, the door to the cell banged open and rebounded off the wall. Ron moaned as light filled the room, temporarily blinding them after so many hours of darkness. When his vision finally adjusted, he saw the two figures standing in the door.  
  
“Thought you might like a little warmth,” one of them said, a horrible smirk playing around his lips.  
“Yeah, stuff it down your knickers to keep warm... get some jollies whilst you're there.”  
  
The second man threw something at Ron's feet. Severus blinked to try and focus his eyes and, when he did, saw what looked like brown fluff littering the floor. Ron was staring at it, transfixed, his face empty of emotion.  
  
“Know what that is?” the man who had thrown it asked.  
“Hair,” Severus said, at the same time as the first man. “Hair...”  
“Very good, Mr Death Eater. Now, the question is, who's?”  
  
Long, trembling fingers extended to the clumps of hair and picked them up. Ron took them very close to his face and seemed to sniff them before dropping them as if they had suddenly grown hot and scalded him.  
  
“That's right,” one of the men taunted – Severus didn't know which because he was too busy staring at Ron. “You know who's it is. We thought you might appreciate a last memento.”  
“What've you done to her?” Ron snarled. His face was brick red.  
  
The men just laughed, stepped backwards and slammed the door shut. Severus was surprised as Ron leapt to his feet, sending the hair flying all around them, to drum his fists frantically against the closed metal door. He continued to bellow after the two men long after their footsteps had faded. Severus sat numbly on the floor and watched him beat his fists bloody until, eventually, after what seemed like forever, he deflated and sagged against the wall. His face was screwed up and Severus wished he had something to do, something to occupy himself, so that he was not forced to intrude upon Ron's emotional trauma. He noticed the blood trickling down pale wrists and sighed.  
  
“Come here,” he instructed, and Ron ignored him. “Ron...”  
  
Again he was ignored and rose up onto his knees, making his way slowly across the small floor. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that the men must have left food and water in the time that it had taken for his vision to return to normal. He ignored it in favour of taking Ron's hands in his own and examining them.  
  
“You'll regret that in the morning,” he said finally, carefully setting the hands back in Ron's lap. The redhead stared dejectedly at them. “Look,” Severus said. “We've got food and water.”  
  
He reached over and dragged the tray over to them. The provisions were measly and stale, but they were still nourishment, however meagre. Severus took a deep swig of water and then offered the glass to Ron, who shook his head.  
  
“Don't be a fool,” Severus muttered. “This could vanish at any minute. You need it.”  
  
Still Ron refused to take the glass and Severus felt his temper flare. He pushed the glass to the boy's mouth, flattening his lower lip and turning it white with the pressure. Ron eventually relented and opened his mouth whilst Severus tilted the glass. He swallowed dutifully and Severus put the glass back on the tray. He grabbed the heel of bread and broke it in half, giving Ron some. The redhead did not need further chiding to nibble at it. Severus devoted himself to eating, trying to keep his pace slow so as not to overload his stomach.  
  
“This is disgusting,” Ron said, making a face as he fought to chew through the stale bread.  
“It's all we've got.”  
  
Ron didn't argue further. When he spoke it was to address the hair on the floor around them. “She'd better not be dead.”  
“What do you plan to do about it from in here if she is?”  
“I dunno... but something. Anything. She'd better not be dead.” Ron was glaring as he spoke and rather viciously tore a chunk of bread off with his teeth.  
“They might just be trying to provoke you... either into losing your temper and goading them into beating you until you sing for them, or that you might try and bargain her life for information. Are you sure it's hers?”  
“I'm sure. It smells just right.”  
  
Ron blushed then and said no more, eating his way through his bread. The sounds of chewing filled the cell and Severus found himself sad when the last of his precious food was gone. Only then did he realise that he probably should have saved half of it on the off chance that it didn't vanish. He would regret it the next day when his stomach began to rumble.  
  
“Do you think that they'll come again?” Ron asked, looking at the glowing light which stayed at the top of the room. “They never normally come more than once a day.”  
“We can but hope,” Severus said dryly. “I'm going to try to sleep, I think. I didn't get anything last night.”  
“Why not?” Ron frowned.  
  
Severus hesitated in answering, choosing instead to stretch out back along the floor, carefully tucking his feet in so that that he missed the chamber pot.  
  
“Why didn't you get any sleep?” Ron asked again, letting out hisses of pain as he crawled across the floor on his hands and knees to look down into Severus' face.  
“It doesn't matter,” Severus dismissed, curling his arm under his head for cushioning.  
“Tell me.”  
  
Severus closed his eyes. “I didn't sleep because you were sleeping... and I didn't... it seemed like...”  
  
Ron laid down alongside him and propped his head up on his hand. “It seemed like what?”  
“Like I should watch over you,” Severus admitted finally. He kept his eyes closed, too embarrassed to open them. Only when Ron had been silent for what felt like five minutes did he dare to chance cracking open an eyelid.  
  
An odd expression marred the boy's face and Severus felt himself colour beneath his stare.  
  
“Thank you,” Ron whispered. He laid down and mirrored Severus' position, but moved closer, so that their chests and stomachs nearly touched. The warmth was tempting in the cold space.  
“What are you doing?”  
  
Ron gave a stunted shrug and said nothing.  
  
***  
  
“Look, will you just keep still?” Severus hissed, using the sleeve of his robe to dab at the bleeding mess which resembled Ron's face.  
“He said that to me,” Ron answered numbly, but did slump back against the wall and settle.  
  
Severus watched his eyes close. He guessed that soon they would be surrounded by painful bruises – they were already swelling. He sighed and lowered his hand when it became clear that he was achieving nothing by trying to blot the blood away – it simply surged up again after a few seconds.  
  
“Are you going to tell me what they did?” He sat back on his heels.  
“Nope,” Ron said resolutely, shaking his head. It was to his credit that he did not wince.  
  
Severus couldn't help but stare at him in amazement. Ronald Weasley was proving stronger than he ever could have guessed or expected. The redhead was determined it seemed, for whatever reason, to protect his old teacher from whatever had happened to him in the three hours he had been missing from the cell that morning.  
  
“Are you okay, at least?” he pushed.  
  
Ron laughed. It shook his whole frame which was so thin that Severus was sure that Molly Weasley would have hysterics if they ever got out alive.  
  
“Nah, I'm really not okay, but what can you do about it? It'll only piss you off, I'll have to relive it, and nobody wins.”  
“Is anybody really winning?” Severus asked sadly.  
  
 _Winning._ That's what they'd thought they were doing. The Dark Lord was dead, the school was in tatters around them. Severus himself had nearly had his throat ripped out by Nagini and should have been in bed, but he'd insisted on being up and helping. He couldn't lay in that hospital bed with his feet dangling over the end a minute longer, not when the likes of Potter were running around putting walls back up and mending magic they had no right to know how to mend.  
  
It was that situation which had seen him patrolling the broken walls with Weasley in the first place. He remembered the redhead yawning as he slouched along and Severus had wondered if the boy had slept even a full hour since the end of the battle, the loss of his brother and the sheer hell they'd all been through. Severus had at least experienced forced somnolence at first in the hospital wing. And then somewhere by the the Astronomy Tower, it all went wrong.  
  
“You're staring at me,” Ron muttered, jerking him from his reverie.  
“Well, your face is quite something.”  
“I never knew you cared.”  
  
They stared at each other and Ron grinned.  
  
“I'm fine,” he said. “Really.”  
“Now,” Severus pointed out. “In a few hours? Tomorrow morning when they want to do it all again?”  
  
Ron blanched at the very thought and Severus only then took note of the way he was holding himself - as if he was trying to hold himself together, his hands and knees pulled tight to his chest, all angles tucked in.  
  
“Or it might be my turn tomorrow,” Severus said softly. “I hope it is.”  
  
Ron's eyes narrowed in confusion.  
  
“They're like a dog with a bone,” he went on in explanation. “They're trying to break you. They'll go on and on and on. I just hope that someone gives them the instruction to have a go at me for a while.”  
“Don't you dare provoke them.” Ron's eyes, growing puffier by the second, fixed on him. “Don't, Severus. I'm-”  
“Younger than me? Able to handle more abuse? You're not invincible. You're practically still a child. And the pain they will cause you will tear your soul to shreds.”  
“And what about your soul?” Ron demanded angrily.  
  
Severus opened his mouth to speak but changed his mind, choosing to shake his head instead.  
  
“Come on, spit it out,” Ron went on. “Don't hold back on my account.”  
“It's not important. But tomorrow when they come, you hide in the corner and I'll do something to annoy one of them, it won't be hard, and you just be grateful for the peace and quiet.”  
“And what about _your_ soul?” Ron repeated stubbornly.  
“I don't think I have one any more,” Severus retorted, more harshly than he liked.  
  
Ron looked as though he'd swallowed a fly. “Everyone has a soul.”  
“Well, if mine's still clinging on, it's in shreds.” Severus gave a nonchalant shrug. “I don't care. It's gone.”  
“They said with the Dementors that a life without a soul is a life worse than death.”  
“Well, I can't find anything at the minute to prove them room.”  
  
They both stayed silent after that. Severus moved to sit next to Ron, feeling that he should be close to the boy, not that he could realistically be anything but in the tiny room. He nearly choked in shock when he felt Ron's weight lean into his side. He stared at the wall opposite as he realised just how much Ron was trembling. He didn't know what to do. It had been so long since anybody had really reached out to him for comfort, and even longer since he had actually given it. Ron's head settled against his shoulder and Severus made no noise or move when shaking fingers covered his own, making his own bones judder even as they rested on the floor.  
  
His other arm was raised before he really knew what he was doing. He touched his maimed hand to Ron's face and held it close to his body, turning his own chin to rest upon the top. He had no idea what he was going for – comfort, a show of solidarity, his own despair. Severus tried to put the question from his mind as they sat there, sharing far more bodily contact than they had done since entering the cell.  
  
 _Hell._  
  
\---

“Weep for yourself, my man,  
You'll never be what is in your heart  
Weep, little lion man,  
You're not as brave as you were at the start  
Rate yourself and rake yourself  
Take all the courage you have left  
And waste it on fixing all the problems that you made in your own head..." (From [Little Lion Man](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLJf9qJHR3E))


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Death. The Tower. The Devil. The Hanged Man.

**Rating:** NC-17 for whole fic, R for this chapter  
 **Content / Warnings:** Story warnings: Dark!fic, EWE, Canon compliant to the end of DH but Snape didn't die, Resurgent fic; _Chapter warnings: angst, torture, mentioned non-con sexual abuse, mind games._  
 **Word Count for this chapter:** ~4,672  
 **Summary:** **Every day is a test of their strength, willpower, and the desire to save their own skins.** > _> Death. The Tower. The Devil. The Hanged Man._

**Chapter Three**

  
Every inch of his skin was singing with pain. Severus had only ever been party to the Cruciatus curse twice before in his life – once from Lucius Malfoy, by mistake, and once from the Dark Lord, on purpose. The latter was meant to be a taste of terror, a threat of what might follow should he ever seem to be digressing from their cause.  
  
That day, however, if his memory was not too frazzled to have recalled the exact number correctly, he had been doused with the curse nine times. Everything was screaming with pain – his flesh, his innards, even his eyeballs. His brain was crashing in time with his pulse. The humiliation of the fact that he had lost control of his bladder and even, he suspected, his bowels, was nothing. He just wanted the hell to stop.  
  
 _There's a very easy way to make it stop..._ the nasty voice in his head piped up. _Just tell them what they want to know._  
  
It was a sign of his immense exhaustion that Severus even allowed the voice a forum, however small. He closed his eyes and saw the thudding shades of black of his own blood beating inside his skull.  
  
 _“Severus, your blood pressure is far too high for someone of your age. You **must** slow down!”_  
  
The words of Poppy Pomfrey came to the fore then and Severus almost laughed at the irony.  
  
“Something funny?” his tormentor asked.  
  
Severus' eyes flew open and he stared at the man. As far as he was aware, neither Ron nor himself had seen Rodolphus Lestrange for days. Wherever he was, the personal torture of his captives didn't seem to be enough of a priority for him to do it himself. Instead he had left it to an increasingly vile band of followers, none of whom Severus recognised.  
  
This perhaps scared him the most, he realised – in the days of the Dark Lord, he had known most of the important followers by face if not name. Now there were new followers, magicked up from some dark recess, no doubt, but they were there, and they were willing to commit the atrocities commanded by their new leader.  
  
The man strolled closer to him, apparently completely at ease with the pain and suffering he had caused. Severus couldn't help but recoil as he drew nearer, leaning back into the wall against which he was chained. His shoulders were killing him having been tied in such an awkward position for so long, and from twisting as the spell tore through his body time after time. A scent mixed of alcohol, dirt and sweat reached his nostrils.  
  
The wizard's wand suddenly pointed into his breastbone and Severus fought hard not to wince. Even a caress would have hurt by that point. The man dragged the wand downwards until it sat just on his pubic bone.  
  
“Personally, I don't see why he's holding off on treating you to the same delights as your little blood-traitor friend.” His face came close to Severus'. “A little bit of forced domination can murder the spirit in even the most hardest of men, so I've heard.”  
  
Severus did not move, didn't even breathe. The man did not know that he had given the first full confirmation of what Severus had been suspecting had been happening to Ron for days.  
  
“I've heard him scream,” the man went on. “He sounds delicious. And I bet, Snape, you'd sound even better. There's something... _scrumptious..._ about hearing an older man break as you take him to task, take away his dignity. Blood-traitor is skinny and young... he barely knows what dignity is. But Lestrange is going after the wrong one, if you ask me... and if I had my way...”  
  
Barely clinging on to the gasp which gathered in his mouth, Severus fought to keep unresponsive as the man palmed over his crotch. There was a laugh, during which Severus was treated to the foul stench from the depths of the man's throat, and an extra squeeze of the hand, and then the wizard stepped back.  
  
“I must say, though, I'm surprised Snape. You withstood more than most could have done.”  
  
He did not groan with relief as his restraints disappeared, easing the pressure on his joints, but he desperately wanted to. Free, he wanted to was scurry back to the cell and sink onto the floor. Maybe then, and only then, he might allow himself a moment of weakness, to shudder and shiver and despise everything he had been through.  
  
Severus steeled himself with that thought as his vision was taken from him and his hands were bound in front of him. He walked when led. However, he was surprised and worried when the journey ended too abruptly for them to have been back at the cell.  
  
“In,” the man muttered, giving him a rough shove.  
  
Severus felt cool tiles beneath his feet that he did not recognise. When the blindfold came off he blinked in the flickering light of a room lit with several candles. To his immediate suspicion, he saw a large bathtub sunken into the floor of the room. Around the edges stood a table stacked high with towels and a few bottles rested along the edge of the sunken bath pit. He couldn't help the incredulous look he shot at the wizard who had spent the day making him cry out in pain.  
  
“Orders,” the man said. “They want you clean for something. And groomed.” He indicated a mirror with a sink beneath it, on which sat the necessary items for shaving. “Ah, and good, you're here-”  
  
Severus looked at the doorway to see Ron being forced over the threshold, his robe slashed open in many places. Through the gaps Severus could see more bruises forming. He had hoped that after he was removed from the cell they would leave Ron alone for the day, but it seemed not. As the redhead's hands were unbound, he swallowed and waited for Ron's vision to be returned to him.  
  
“Oh, I think not...” The man gave a twisted little smirk. “You can mop up the blood-traitor, Snape.”  
“Nice touch,” the newcomer said, snorting with laughter.  
“They said they wanted them clean, they didn't say how they should get that way. You'll find new robes in here.” A chest of drawers Severus hadn't noticed was indicated.  
  
 _And how very unlike me that is..._ Severus fought to keep the frown from his face. He had made a living out of being the most observant man on the planet. Now, seemingly, he had forgotten all of his carefully practised skill.  
  
“If either of you even think about suicide, or the friendly gesture of homicide...” It was the other man spoke then and that time, Severus recognised him. He seemed to have risen high. Severus could only remember him as a trolley dolly, serving the Dark Lord refreshment. “We'll know, and we'll come, and you'll wish you'd succeeded. D'you understand? We'll be just outside the door.”  
  
With that, both smirking, they departed the room and Severus could hear them both break into full laughter as soon as the door was shut. Anger flickered to life within his chest and it was only strengthened when he turned to look at Ron, who stood vulnerable and tattered where he had been left.  
  
“Cunts,” Ron said, trying to sound jovial but failing.  
“That is not a word I was brought up to use,” Severus said, gently touching his hands to Ron's shoulders. “But I am certainly inclined to agree.”  
“I wasn't brought up to use it either, but there you go.” Ron's voice seemed faint and completely unlike his usual self.  
  
Severus took advantage of the fact that Ron could not see him observing and let his eyes take in all of the damage that he could see. Finally, when he knew what he would have to do next, he sighed.  
  
“I'm going to have to do what they say, Ron. If I don't they'll only do it themselves and contrary to what you might think, it'll probably be more mortifying than if I just get on with it now.”  
“It's fine,” said Ron dully. “I can't see anything, it's going to be worse for you.”  
“Why?”  
“Do you make a habit out of seeing your ex-students in the buff?” Ron asked, the ghost of a grin flitting over his face.  
“Maybe,” Severus retorted, reaching down and gathering the hem in his hands. “Now shut up and stick your arms in the air.  
  
Ron did as he was told and Severus tugged the material upwards, sending greasy red hair into disarray as he did so. He found himself momentarily entranced by the sight of it, going in all directions. It had been longer than usual when they'd been taken, and now it threatened to tickle Ron's shoulders in length.  
  
 _Perhaps you are not so out of practice at observing as you thought..._ the snide voice said suddenly.  
  
Ron had been right, Severus realised, as his own cheeks flushed with colour. Ron couldn't see anything and though vulnerable, could do nothing about his situation. Severus was the one standing there, clutching at an old student's robe, seeing him properly naked for the first time and all the damage that entailed. He bit down hard on his tongue to keep from commenting on the bruise patterns, some of which clearly formed the shape of grabbing hands, and stripes which indicated some form of whip, cane or crop.  
  
“Not a pretty sight, eh?” Ron asked.  
“Well, I no longer need to ask what they've been doing to you. I can see for myself, and I was told in as many words earlier.”  
“What did they say?” Ron whispered.  
  
“Just that they thought that I should be the one on the receiving end of such treatment. That it would be much more humiliating and serving if I were the one being...”  
  
He stopped short of using the word 'raped', unsure of what effect it would have on Ron. He threw the filthy robe he was clutching to the floor and kicked it aside before shrugging his own up over his shoulders and adding it to the pile. He caught sight of his reflection in the mirror and winced; he had never been handsome or well-built but Severus hadn't been prepared for how emaciated he looked. Glancing back to Ron he realised that he shouldn't have been surprised, for he was in much the same state.  
  
“Come on,” he said forcefully. “We might as well use this to our advantage. Hot water will help everything that hurts.”  
“Not everything,” Ron offered, in the same weak tone which made Severus' heart sink.  
  
It was starting. He was breaking, whether he wanted to or not.  
  
“Well, it's a start.” He bent down, ignoring the stabbing pain which erupted in his side, and turned one of the taps.  
  
The bath had none of the finesse of the Prefect's Bathroom at Hogwarts, he found. The water which spilt into the sunken bath was hot but nothing else. He surveyed the items on the side and saw one marked as bath salts – clearly a cruel joke from someone, because the salts would only sting and fizz where they were not needed. Still, it was better than nothing, and he upended the jar into the water and swirled it with his hand. Ron remained still in the middle of the room, saying nothing. Severus straightened, resolutely continuing to ignore the pain, and went to collect an armful of towels, which he set carefully on the sparkling clean floor of the room. It was a far cry from the dirt of their cell. Almost instantly his skin began to creep beneath the weight of the filth resting on it.  
  
“Come here,” he instructed, taking hold of Ron's wrist and pulling him gently. “There's nothing in front of you, you're safe to walk.”  
  
Severus marvelled at how the boy immediately trusted him. Ron's walk was slow and cautious, but he allowed Severus to guide him and stopped when instructed. The water was fast filling the bath and Severus dipped his foot in and hissed at the immense heat. He turned on the cold tap and watched the pool-like hole fill further. He swirled the water with his arm and then sat down on the edge.  
  
“Sit down next to me,” he said, giving a tug on Ron's arm.  
  
The redhead did so, sinking his feet into the hot water. Severus slid fully into the bath and found that he could stand with the water at waist level. He put a guiding hand on Ron's waist and pulled him forward, so that they ended standing face to face, waist-deep in the water. Only after he had grown accustomed to the level of heat enveloping his body did Severus turn his attention to Ron, who seemed to be fighting the urge to moan.  
  
“Sore?” Severus asked quietly, not wanting to give the men on the other side of the door any ammunition.  
“Uh-huh.” There was too much breath in the mutter and Severus winced at the thought of what he suspected Ron was experiencing. “But it's water. Thank god.”  
  
Severus hummed in agreement and moved away. A small tiled bench ran around the lower perimeter of the bath and he sat on it, having no choice but to allow the water to rise to just below chin level. He couldn't help the slight groan which rose out of his throat as the water pressed against his aching body. He slid out of his seat and lowered his entire body beneath the water, closing his eyes and pausing there until his lungs cried out for air. He broke the surface panting and blinked.  
  
“Nice view?” Ron asked.  
“I had my eyes closed.”  
“I'll believe you, thousands wouldn't.” Ron's voice was suddenly warmer, more cheerful. When Severus did look at him, he saw that Ron had found the little shelf seat of his own accord and was sitting down. “Not that there's much to look at, anyway.”  
“Where have you picked up the notion that I would look at all?” Severus needled, unable to help himself as he gravitated closer to the redhead, whose hair was starting to darken with sweat as it clung to his forehead and temples.  
  
 _What are you doing?_  
  
Severus ignored his own question as he stopped in front of Ron, crouched down so that only his head remained out of the water, even though the boy could not see anything.  
  
“Sorry... I'm just joking,” Ron murmured. “I mean... there's not a lot to joke about, is there?”  
“No, there's not...”  
“I didn't mean to upset you.”  
“You haven't upset me, I just... I suppose...”  
“What?”  
“I was worried that you might actually be expressing true concern.”  
  
Ron laughed and Severus stared at him, taken aback.  
  
“If you were looking, you'd be the first person that ever bothered. I don't think my mum checking for Dragonpox counts.”  
  
He made a face and Severus, despite himself and the gravity of their situation, laughed.  
  
“How long d'you think we've got?” Ron asked, tipping his head back to rest on the edge of the bath. Severus was unnerved by the way he couldn't tear his eyes away from the sight of the boy's elongated throat. “Before they come back?”  
  
Severus strained to listen for voices outside the door. Either the men had fallen completely silent or they had left. He didn't bother to get up and test the door – he knew that they wouldn't have dared to leave it unlocked.  
  
“We'd best not waste the time...” he said finally.  
“No, be nice to be muck free for a bit,” Ron agreed.  
“Do you need help?” Severus asked, reaching for a bottle labelled as shampoo. He unscrewed the cap and sniffed hard at the bottleneck, ever suspicious. All he smelt were herbs, however, and a underlying whiff of something soapy.  
“Not with this, just put the shampoo in my hand. But shaving... that could get a bit messy.”  
  
Severus did as Ron requested and squeezed a dollop of shampoo into his outstretched palm. He then set to washing his own hair, enjoying the feel of the dirt lifting beneath his fingers. It took him three rinses before he thought it was as clean as it could be, given his body's natural proclivity towards oiliness. He turned his attention to the soap on the side and stood up to run it in circles all over his body. After the torture of the day the bar stung him as he washed and it was with a wince that he handed it to Ron, who accepted it. His hair was completely back from his face, plastered to his head by the water. Severus mourned the loss of it surrounding his face – without it, Ron looked even thinner. He followed the line of his neck and shoulders, seeing prominent collarbones and showing ribs, a flat stomach and slender hips. He could keep looking through the water, Severus knew, but suddenly felt guilty.  
  
Ron seemed to realise he was under observation and hastened to wash himself. He hissed every time he went over a bruise or lash, and he turned, revealing more than Severus had seen before.  
  
“Sweet -”  
“I know, all right?” Ron said hotly. “Just leave it.”  
“Those need to be cleaned,” Severus contested. “Else they'll become infected.”  
  
Ron immediately tried to reach behind his back and promptly dropped the bar of soap. Severus retrieved it from the bottom of the bath and instead of handing it back, gently pressed the slippery rectangle to Ron's skin. Gently he worked the soap over the worst of the wounds, noting how very deep they were, and how much they must have hurt when inflicted.  
  
“What did they do this with?” He couldn't keep the question in. His mind hurt trying to recall any such instrument being used in the past.  
“It's a kind of whip,” Ron muttered. “Fucking hurts like hell. It feels like it's made of fire.”  
“These aren't burns,” Severus said, peering at one closely.  
“No. But it feels like they should be.”  
“When it hits, does it hit in one place or several?”  
“Lots of places. And they don't care what they land on.”  
  
Severus winced, wondering what state Ron's internal organs were in. His kidneys were in danger if their captors were not mindful where their blows landed.  
  
“Perhaps they have poisoned the tails,” he mused aloud. “A Cat O' Nine Tails is an older form of punishment. A whip with many cords attached to it to inflict maximum damage.”  
“It feels like they're made of fire.”  
“Maybe they are. I put nothing past these animals.”  
  
He continued in silence then, trying hard to be gentle though he knew he failed, many times.  
  
“Would it help if you talked about it?” he blurted ungracefully, and felt his face flush with ugly embarrassment.  
  
 _Why are you bothering to offer comfort? Why?_  
  
“I don't know,” Ron answered earnestly. “I half think I like pretending it hasn't happened. But it's... it's...”  
“Horrible,” Severus finished for him. Ron nodded in agreement.  
“What did they do to you today?” the redhead attempted to change the subject.  
“Several tries with the Cruciatus.”  
“How many's several when it's at home?”  
“Nine.”  
“Fuck.”  
“You said it.”  
  
Severus gave up with the soap and looked down at it. It was coated in flecks of blood. He quickly rinsed it in the water and put it on the side.  
  
“Is there anything else you want help with in here?”  
“Nah. Feels weird being clean. I almost want the dirt back.” Ron turned then and Severus saw that he was grinning.  
  
That he could smile at all seemed a gargantuan feat in light of the things he'd been through. He opened his mouth to suggest that they get out to start what he was sure to be an embarrassing task of shaving – he had never had cause to shave another man in his life, given that his father had passed away long before old age had ever come calling, and not that Severus would have wasted the energy in helping him any way. Ron, however, reached out for him, putting one hand on his shoulder.  
  
“Oh, you're there.”  
“Where else would I be?” Severus hated how throaty his voice sounded. It was almost seductive but that was impossible as he had never seduced anybody in his life.  
“I don't know,” Ron whispered. “But... I'm scared of you leaving me.”  
“As long as it is in my power to do so, I will stay with you to the end of this... whatever ending we may have.”  
“Don't pretend there's going to be any other ending than us both dying.” Ron shook his head, his eyes kept closed by the spell that was blinding him. “What's the point in lying, Severus?”  
  
Everything terrible about the situation converged on him at that moment and his legs seemed to turn to jelly. Their confinement, their humiliation, the fact that Ronald Weasley was before him using his first name. It was all too much and the heat became oppressive rather than comforting. Sweat prickled on his brow and Severus had no choice but to be consumed by the giddiness as it came. He swayed and collided with Ron, who did not budge, but grabbed him by the waist.  
  
He felt as though he was outside of his body as the redhead pulled him closer and held him. The last time anybody had held him so tightly, with such obvious attempt to calm, was the woman whom he had dreamt of. It had been the last time he had seen her and she had seemed unwilling to part with him. He wondered if Ron would protest if he tried to pull away, but he had no energy to do so.  
  
He lifted his head to try and discern what Ron was thinking, but that was the wrong move to make. Their faces met and they stood nose-to-nose and lip-to-lip, matched in height. Severus didn't know which of them made the move but the kiss was inevitable as he saw it.  
  
 _Sometimes, two people do things at the same time... neither is to blame..._  
  
Ron did not leap back, as Severus assumed he would, and so it was with surprise that he stood there, responding and not moving away himself, kissing the youngest Weasley boy, his unexpected companion.  
  
***  
  
Freshly washed, shaven and clothed, they were led back to their cell. When the door had closed behind them and Severus opened his eyes, he saw that the room had also been cleaned, the chamber pot emptied. With a pang in his belly he noted that their bloodied chess pieces had been removed. Then his attention was taken by a table which had appeared. Then he noticed that the entire room was bigger and that on the floor there were two futon-like mattresses, both covered by blankets.  
  
“What the fuck?” Ron asked, clearly as stunned as Severus was. “Oh my god, look, food. And pumpkin juice. And...”  
  
His fingers dragged over a box that Severus had to squint to define. A chess board. He edged closer to the table, taking in the veritable feast which had been left for them, and then he noticed the cards.  
  
Cartomancy was something he had not considered for many years. Just the sight of the cards made his stomach clench – they reminded him of his mother.  
  
“Tarot?” Ron frowned, looking down on them. “I got out of Divination before that old Trelawny bat could get into them. What do they mean?”  
  
He looked to Severus for answers, but Severus was too assaulted by the memories the cards brought back to answer him. His head began to thump again. He could remember being small, sitting huddled with his mother as she shuffled the cards and tried to draw her luck from them. He could remember the soft hiss from her mouth as, time and time again, she drew a card which she could not bear the sight of.  
  
“Death,” Severus said, pointing to the card. “The Tower. The Devil. The Hanged Man.”  
  
Ron stilled beside him and Severus could see the fear in his expression.  
  
“They attempt to intimidate us further.”  
“They've got spells to do that.”  
“Don't read into these cards, Ron, they are nothing but _fucking_ bullshit,” he said venomously, and turned his back on them, clenching his hands into fists.  
  
Perhaps his swearing shocked the redhead more than the cards, but Ron remained silent.  
  
“Death... parting of the ways, accept the inevitable.” He thought back to what Ron had said about their inevitable deaths. “The Tower. No defence is impenetrable. Dramatic upheaval. Chaos everywhere.” He thought of Hogwarts and what had happened to them there. “The Devil. Bondage. Manipulation by others. Relinquishing control.” He thought of Ron's scars, of the torture he had been through that very afternoon. “The Hanged Man. Again, relinquishing control. Possible sacrifice. Limbo.” They existed in a state of dependency on their captors, never knowing what was coming next.  
  
It was only then that he realised that he was shaking. He jumped when Ron touched his shoulder.  
  
“My brother said Tarot's a load of bollocks,” he said stoutly. “They're just trying to creep us out.”  
“Well, it's working,” Severus muttered. His eyes cast about the much-changed cell and he hated their offering of comfort, knowing it would all soon be taken away again. “They're playing mind games. Letting us wash, giving us all this. The cards are just the cherry on the top.”  
“Severus, they're just cards,” Ron said emphatically turning and scooping them all into his hands. “They're everything or nothing – we should just believe that they're nothing.”  
“Hark whose talking, the boy who not half an hour had accepted the inevitability of his own death with the same geniality of the acceptance of having to take a shit.”  
  
Feeling his composure flooding away, Severus buried his face in his hands, hiding himself away whilst he tried to dislodge the ghosts of the past from his mind. The cards that his mother had pulled out of her grandmother's deck had never given them anything positive – and their lives had never been positive.  
  
He looked up at the sound of ripping. Ron had torn all four cards in half.  
  
“Bollocks to it,” he said firmly, and cast them into the bottom of the chamber pot.  
  
Severus stared at him.  
  
“They might tell the truth, they might not. But nothing that's happened since we got shoved in this cell has made you that pale, Severus, not even when they made me chop off your finger. So they're gone, all right? Just forget they were ever here.”  
“Whatever they've prepared us for, it's going to be big,” he said weakly. “Maybe fatal.”  
“Well, bring it on then,” Ron said, throwing himself in one of the chairs at the table. He pulled a plate of bread towards him. “Sit down and eat something.”  
  
The room quickly filled with the sounds of chewing but Severus could not make himself move, nor could he quell the nausea in his belly. If there was one thing he truly loathed, it was being mind-fucked.  
  
\----  
  


  
_"Won't you take me by the hand?_  
Take me somewhere new.  
I don't know who you are,  
But I... I'm with you.  
I'm with you."  
From [HERE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGR65RWwzg8).  



	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The truth, at last.

**Rating:** NC-17 for whole fic, NC-17 for this chapter  
 **Content / Warnings:** Story warnings: Dark!fic, EWE, Canon compliant to the end of DH but Snape didn't die, Resurgent fic; _Chapter warnings: angst, mentioned torture, non-con sexual abuse and manipulation, mind games._  
 **Word Count for this chapter:** ~5,438  
 **Summary:** **Every day is a test of their strength, willpower, and the desire to save their own skins.** > _> The truth, at last._  
  


**Chapter Four**

  
"Will you stop doing that?"  
"What?" Ron asked, reasonably indignant.  
  
Severus closed his eyes and slumped back against the wall. He couldn't answer, because it was so irrational it was sure to cause an argument. Instead he simply shook his head and kept quiet.  
  
 _Stop breathing, you annoying little shit._ There were no prizes for keeping quiet inside his own mind, however.  
  
Instead he waited for the sound of chess pieces to begin moving and when they did, he opened his eyes and surveyed the redhead, sitting at the table playing chess against himself. He was sat with his brow furrowed, chin resting on a hand, his ankles crossed and one, long bare foot bearing the brunt of the weight of his legs. Even the foot was freckled - Severus had never known that feet could have freckles before he had spent days locked inside a cell with Ronald Weasley.  
  
Ron made a slight coughing noise deep in his throat and irritation seared through Severus' body. He clenched his fists.  
  
He was royally wound up and had been ever since they had first returned from the bathroom, squeaky clean, to find the tarot cards threateningly on the table at which Ron now sat. He seemed completely unperturbed by the hints they had given. Perhaps, Severus thought, he had learned to take everything as it came, to let nothing particularly unnerve him so as to not give their captors the satisfaction.  
  
 _Well then he's a fucking better man than I am._  
  
Closing his eyes again, he tried not to balk when the cards sprang up in the darkness. He had no idea why they had needled him as much as they had, or why they continued to do so when the chamber pot containing their torn remains had long since been emptied. He knew from his tally that five days had passed since their last bout of torture and subsequent cleaning.  
  
They had had five days of daily trips to that bathroom, fresh food and water and peace and quiet. Severus knew he should be grateful for the small reprieve, but suspicion made his body tingle every time something good happened. What were they planning? Why had he and Ron suddenly been given a decent existence compared to what they had been living? Something was going to happen, but Severus had assumed that the blow would fall on the first day after the bath, and the food and the cards. Yet they had seen nobody except the men who escorted them to the bathroom and waited outside it whilst they washed. Ron had been able to wash himself as nobody since had played the game where Severus had to help him carry out his ablutions.  
  
Something was going to happen and it was driving Severus mad trying to guess when and what it would be. That, perhaps, was the reason he was growing angry at every little noise that Ron made. The noises were not answers, and he desperately wanted them.  
  
 _That, and it's not even proper noise._ Severus tried to bat this notion away as soon as it sprang to mind, but, as had happened several times already that week, it refused to budge. He swallowed and licked his lips, determined that he would not be drawn into the internal argument yet again.  
  
The thing was, when he thought about it, Severus' entire life had been filled with noise, even though at times he had felt like he was completely alone. His childhood, grim as it was, had been full of noise - raging arguments between his parents filled every nook and cranny of the house he had grown up in, shaking the windows and rattling the floorboards. Though he had always hidden in his bedroom, or whatever dark room he could find at the time, it hadn't stopped the noise escaping and finding his ears. He had grown to resent both of his parents for the fact that they seemingly could not exist peacefully. Why shout if they were angry - why couldn't they just ignore each other and speak only when necessary? He had been glad to escape to Hogwarts, knowing that he would find a different kind of noise there, but it would be noise that he could tolerate. He did, enjoying being able to sink into an armchair in the Slytherin common room, or bury his nose in a book in the library, eat in silence at his house table at meal times, and nobody would really bother him except his tormentors, Potter and Black.  
  
Severus had been sad to leave the relative safety of Hogwarts at the end of his seventh year. He had known then where he was headed, having been spurned by Lily and the friends that she had so despised had been willing to accept him into their ranks.  
  
And so he had begun his role as a servant of the Dark Lord. That too had been full of noise - jeering, screaming, cruel laughter. Nevertheless, it had been noise into which he could disappear until called upon. When he had returned to Dumbledore, made his bargain and committed himself to a life of servitude, the familiar noises of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry had flowed over him once again. It had remained there, with the added noise of the Second War, until the fateful day he had patrolled the ramparts with Ron on the day that they were taken.  
  
Noise. His life had been full of it, and now all that remained was ugly silence, and his own thoughts, which over the years he had been able to ignore. Now it was impossible to let them go.  
  
In short, the silence was driving him mad, and he was angry with Ron for creating petty noises, which could not drive out the continual slew of anger and self-deprecation in his mind.  
  
He allowed his eyes to focus on Ron again and felt bitterness spring up in his belly. Again he knew his resentment was completely irrational, but he could not quash it. It roared in him like a lion, fighting to get out of him. He knew his eyes had narrowed and his fists were once again clenched.  
  
 _Ignorant, foolish child. He sits there happily, not bothering to think about what is coming, what is meant by the chess set he sits there and plays for enjoyment._  
  
"Why are you staring at me like that?" Ron asked loudly and Severus jerked on the floor; he had been so lost in his own mind.  
"I'm not," he muttered, folding his arms over his chest and drawing his knees up.  
"Okay then," Ron said, clearly derisive.  
  
His long fingers locked around a chess piece and plonked it down. He let out a satisfied sigh and straightened, raising both of his arms high above his head and stretching.  
  
"Who won?" Severus kept his tone dry.  
  
Ron rolled his eyes and shook his head, choosing not to answer. Severus hated him a little bit more for not taking the bait. The redhead began sorting the pieces out, returning them to their correct sides of the board, and Severus had a brief fantasy of ripping the board to shreds, so that Ron too might know what it was to be driven mad by his own mind in the silence.  
  
"Do you ever stop?" he muttered bitterly.  
"Stop what?"  
"That."  
"What?" Ron asked, more emphatically.  
  
Severus glared at him and it only served to anger him further when Ron stared back, meeting his eye with an insolence which Severus could remember from Hogwarts.  
  
"Have you ever stopped to think that whilst you sit there enjoying their gift to you, they are lulling you into a false sense of security - exactly where they want you?"  
"I know full well what they're doing." Ron shrugged. "I'm just enjoying this while it lasts. If you had any sense, you'd be doing that too, instead of sitting there winding yourself up."  
"I am doing nothing of the sort."  
  
Ron laughed and Severus very dearly wanted to hit him.  
  
"You have no idea, do you?" Severus spat, unable to keep the verbal bile in. "What it all means?"  
"'Course I do," Ron frowned, turning his eyes back to the chessboard. "They're mind-fucking us. Treating us nicely, giving us things to keep us occupied, trying to make hope live. And then they're going to swoop in and smash it all to bits and we'll be left broken in the mess."  
"Then how can you sit there and play fucking chess if you know all that?"  
"Because I can't change it, Severus, and neither can you. We can't do anything about our situation, so why don't we just make the best of it?"  
"How can you be so content to let them fuck with your mind?"  
  
Ron shrugged and picked up a pawn.  
  
"I don't know why I expected anything less of a thick little shit like you," Severus threw churlishly.  
"Come on, Severus, don't do this, this is exactly what they want you to do."  
"Do what?"  
"Turn on me for something to do. They want to drive us apart."  
"How, exactly, do you know all this?"  
"Perhaps I'm not as thick as you think I am."  
"Doubtful."  
  
Severus glared at Ron again and said nothing more, biting hard into his bottom lip for something to do. He tasted blood soon thereafter but didn't stop.  
  
"Are you finished now?" Ron asked, some five minutes later.  
"Finished what?"  
"Taking your fear out on me?"  
"I am _not_ afraid."  
  
Ron gave a gentle laugh and shook his head, his message clear. _Could have fooled me._ What annoyed Severus the most was that he knew Ron was right.  
  
"What I can't figure out," Ron went on, selecting a pawn to move. "Is why you kissed me if you were just going to go back to being the twat I've always loved to hate."  
"Maybe I've always been that twat - maybe it was the twat that kissed you."  
  
The kiss in the bath had not been discussed since it had happened - it had been so successfully ignored by both of them that Severus had started to wonder if he had imagined the whole thing.  
  
"It's all right," Ron said soberly. "If you regret it. It's fine. Most people would regret kissing me."  
"Pardon?"  
  
Ron did not move as he looked down at the chessboard, pawn still in hand, seemingly expending all his energy on trying to decide whether to move one or two chequered spaces. When he spoke again, it was in a much diminished tone to what he had been speaking before.  
  
"Why would anybody want to kiss me?" He licked at the corner of his mouth. He finally put the pawn down. "Look at me. I know Rodolphus' cronies get a kick out of using me, but that's just for fun and to ruin me. I'm scarred and ugly and a munter."  
"Ron-"  
"Don't bother trying to reassure me, It's fine. I accepted it long ago. Even my own mother doesn't like me as much as the rest of her children. That's pretty damning, right?"  
"It would be, if it was the truth. But it's clearly not."  
  
Ron moved another chess piece. "I bet they're not even looking for me." A disturbing despondency had crept into his tone. "Harry's got what he wanted - my sister, and life. Hermione's probably found someone else by now if she's still alive. What do my parents care? They've got four other boys to enjoy. They never wanted me anyway."  
  
The truth hit Severus then - that whilst he had been sitting going over everything in his mind, growing angrier and angrier with the redhead for his apparent nonchalance at their predicament, Ron had been doing exactly the same, only whilst playing chess. And whilst Severus' musings were rooted in the past, Ron's were very much present, and damaging.  
  
"You shouldn't talk about yourself like that." Severus shivered slightly. "You are loved, Ron, and you should not talk yourself out of such comfort."  
"They don't love me," he said sadly. "Perhaps that's why I'm okay with this now... now that I've come to terms with the fact that I'm going to die here. Alone."  
"You're not alone," Severus murmured. "I am here."  
  
He felt his face grow hot under the intensity of Ron's gaze as it turned upon him. Jewel blue eyes seemed to bore right into his soul.  
  
He thought he saw Ron's mouth open to reply, but there was a thump on the door of their cell and it swung open.  
  
"Come on," a masked man said. "You're to come with me. Hands out."  
  
Severus hated the way his heartbeat quickened as his wrists were bound and his vision was taken away. He felt the warmth of Ron's body against him as they began to walk, led by their captor into Merlin only knew what. Ron stumbled slightly against him and Severus could not stop thinking about the things the boy had just said.  
  
The chatter of a gathering suddenly erupted around them and Severus held his breath, waiting for the moment that his sight would be returned to him. He heard the chamber door close behind them and the crowd hushed. He blinked when the light came, burning his dark eyes as it always did. He hated the disorientation.  
  
"Welcome!" Rodolphus called, a dangerous smirk twisting his mouth. He was sat in something which vaguely resembled a throne and there were more people around him than Severus could ever remember seeing before. "I see you have both benefited from my generosity. You look much improved."  
  
Severus desperately hoped that they were not expected to thank him for his so-called 'generosity'. However, Lestrange moved on without any further comment.  
  
"The time has come for us to find out what you truly know. I could have used this at the very beginning, but then..." his smirk became a full-on smile, maniacal and leering. "What would have been the fun in that? Restrain them."  
  
Severus did not fight as someone huge and hulking wrestled him into a chair which was brought up behind him. His wrists and ankles were both shackled to the wood and out of the corner of his eye he saw Ron bound in the same way. His skin began to creep - they were both trapped with no defences and no way of stopping anything which might happen.  
  
"I hear you didn't appreciate my gift?" Lestrange asked, walking close with something in his hand. With a lurch of his stomach, Severus realised that he was holding brand new tarot cards, the exact few that Ron had torn up and then pissed on later that same day. "I thought they might interest you, Snape."  
  
Severus watched as one by one, the cards were flicked to land at his feet. His body shuddered involuntarily.  
  
"Give them it."  
  
Severus recognised it immediately. Veritaserum. He had been expecting it from day one, but it made so much sense for Lestrange to play with his food before eating it. Severus began to sweat, wondering if their end was truly nigh, once everything they knew had been extracted from them. There was no beating Veritaserum and Lestrange would know it. They had been kept alive and tortured whilst it was brewed; he could detect the notes of the fresh ingredients which meant that the potion could at best be only a few hours old. Maybe even minutes. Thick fingers pinched his nose and his mouth sprang open. A goblet was pressed into his lower lip and tilted, so that the truth serum flooded his mouth and, faced with an alternative of choking, he swallowed it. He heard no noises to suggest that Ron was putting up a fight, either.  
  
"You're the Potions Master, Snape... how long before it kicks in?" Lestrange asked, walking close to him and bending so that they were eye to eye. He was still grinning.  
"One minute," Severus whispered.  
"Good! Good good good." Lestrange was almost singing as he walked over to Ron and slid one hand suggestively up his thigh. "I hear you've been keeping my men very happy. Such a good little whore. They say you whimper and cry out and beg like the best of them. Perhaps, when I'm done here today, I'll taste you myself. Hmm? Would you like that?"  
  
The room erupted into laughter at was presumably a negative response in Ron's expression. Lestrange laughed loudest of all and sauntered back to his throne at the head of the room. He motioned for quiet when he had settled.  
  
"A test, at first, I think?" he mused. "Snape, do you find Weasley attractive?"  
"Yes." Severus was left open-mouthed as his speech betrayed him.  
"Lovely, I can use that," Lestrange went on. "Right then, to business."  
  
Severus didn't dare look at Ron.  
  
"Snape, where is Harry Potter?"  
"I don't know. Probably hiding." Severus winced as the Veritaserum made him borderline belligerent.  
"And you have no idea where he's hiding?"  
"Probably Hogwarts? If he's hiding, he'll be using a Fidelius Charm, that's a given."  
"And he's used them before?"  
"Not him personally, but the Order were masters at the Fidelius Charm and he is likely to be protected by those that remain."  
"And you were never given information as to where he planned to go when he was finished restoring Hogwarts?"  
"I assumed he would return to Grimmauld Place, the filthy home of his godfather."  
"My wife's cousin."  
"Yes."  
  
Lestrange regarded him for a moment before speaking again. "And who will Potter have with him?"  
"Well, probably his love interest, Ginevra Weasley."  
  
There was a small squeak from next to him and Severus felt sick.  
"What about the mudblood, Granger?"  
"I have no idea of her whereabouts."  
"What about you, Ginger?" Lestrange turned his attention to Ron. "Where's your little mudblood whore?"  
"I dunno, but she might be in Australia, searching for her parents. She sent them there, obliviated them. Made them forget her and move away so that they'd be safe."  
  
Severus couldn't help but look then, he had to see look of mortification which was sure to be on Ron's face after confessing such tightly protected information.  
  
"And what about your family?" Lestrange pressed on, his smirk becoming even more pronounced as he saw the horror in Ron's eyes at what was about to be asked of him. "Where are your family hiding, Weasley?"  
"I don't know." It was a whisper. "I don't know where they've gone."  
"Well why don't you tell me some places where they've gone before, and we can go from there."  
"Romania," Ron blurted, clearly trying to fight the serum and failing. "They might be there. My brother Charlie has been working on the dragon reserve there for years. Or maybe they've gone to Auntie Muriel's... she's got a really huge house. Enough space for everyone in my family and a few more. And they might be in Grimmauld Place with Harry, if he's there... we've stayed there before."  
"And so what about Potter? Where's Potter?"  
"I don't know."  
"Has he ever told you of anywhere he would go, should he need to hide?"  
"No."  
"What about your sister, did she ever say anything?"  
"No."  
"WHERE IS POTTER?" Lestrange bellowed suddenly, flying off his throne and wrapping his hand around Ron's throat.  
"I don't know!" Ron cried in shock, his eyes beginning to bulge under the strength of the grip around his windpipe. "He never said anything, I swear! I don't know anything!"  
  
Deflated, Lestrange stood back and stared at the pair of them. Disappointment was etched in every feature. "I was sure that you were both just being idiotically stoic," he said finally. "I was sure you would know."  
"Are you going to kill us now?" Ron sounded almost hopeful, the serum having lifted all of his self-created fear away.  
"Oh, no," Lestrange said softly, sitting back down in his throne. "You're far too valuable for me to waste your blood, Weasley. Potter will do anything to get you back. You're staying put. Snape too. We hear you've turned into something of a hero to them... fuck knows why. You were only ever trying to save your own skin, no matter what side you were on. No, you two are staying put until such time as you're useful. And I reckon that won't be too long." He laughed and shook his head disbelievingly, clearly still riled by the fact that they had both been telling the truth and had provided no information about where anybody was.  
  
Severus remained seated when his wrists and ankles were freed. He clutched at the arms of the chairs, waiting for dismissal. Nothing came, however, as the chamber erupted into chatter around them. He glanced at Ron and saw the redhead looking sick. He wanted to reassure him, to promise him that he had said nothing that the Death Eaters around them did not already know; Severus was mostly sure of that fact. They had been banking on the fact that Ron had been holding out on them, and that under the serum would finally sing all the secrets he had been hiding. That he knew nothing was a real blow to them.  
  
"Let's have some entertainment," Lestrange called finally, and the chattering stopped.  
  
***  
  
"Shhh," Severus whispered, holding Ron close to his chest. He stroked his hair and kept his own face pressed into it. Every ample inch of Ron was shaking.  
  
It hadn't taken long after they'd returned to their cells for Ron to crack. It had been loud, wet and snotty, but Severus was not surprised after everything the redhead had been put through that afternoon. He himself had simply been re-chained to the chair and rendered immobile. Ron had been the one who had been forced to carry out explicit sexual acts upon him, purely at Lestrange's whim. Severus could still feel the wet heat of Ron's tongue curling around his cock, digging into his slit and suckling at him, as if desperate for a response, any response.  
  
Severus' body had given it, even though he had tried and tried to hold back. He had watched with mingled horror and desire as he had flooded the boy's mouth with come and Ron had swallowed gulp after gulp, trying to keep up. When he was done, Lestrange had had the boy clean him up with his tongue. And then, with barely any respite, the whole sorry scene was repeated, Severus unable to help his body's response, and Ron imperiused to do Lestrange's bidding.  
  
"I'm sorry," Severus murmured into Ron's hair. "So sorry that you had to go through that."  
  
Ron said nothing, hiding his face in Severus' front. He was gripping Severus' frame so tightly that it ached, but Severus would not push him away. Instead he pulled Ron tighter against him, throwing caution to the wind as he stroked down a long back over and over again.  
  
"It wasn't your fault," Ron sniffed finally, turning his head to rest his cheek on Severus' chest so that he could speak.  
"My body's reaction most certainly was." Severus fought off a shiver.  
"You're only human." The voice was meek and broken, but Severus thought he detected a hint of humour there.  
  
He opened his mouth to speak again but was winded when Ron nuzzled against him and the feel of it, even though they were in a grave situation, with nothing left to give those who held power over them except their sanity, was heavenly. He held his breath as the motion came again and Ron's hands interlocked at the base of his spine.  
  
"What?" Ron asked astutely, looking up at him. "Oh." He blushed, and made to pull away, but Severus kept him locked in place.  
"Don't," he grunted, feeling tension in his jaw as he fought to keep his admission inside: _I adore this_.  
  
Ron stared at him for the smallest of moments before replacing his head and falling still. Severus was glad and exhaled; he loathed the shake that he heard in the breath.  
  
"That's the sort of stuff they've been doing to me for ages," Ron said quietly. "Sometimes one of them will get so turned on watching that he'll actually fuck me."  
"And it's always the Imperius Curse?"  
"They lift it for the fucking part... want me to cry for them, don't they?"  
"I'm so-"  
"Don't say you're fucking sorry. It's not your fault and you've got _nothing_ to apologise for."  
"I just... am."  
"Don't be a twat, Severus," Ron said, lifting his head again and meeting his gaze. "It's not you who should be apologising. It's them. They're the cunts here. Not us."  
"But this afternoon, I played straight into their hands..."  
"You're only human," Ron repeated, sitting up properly. "There aren't many men who could have someone sucking their cock and not get off on it."  
"Well, that's ridiculous, because I might not like men, and I might not like oral sex, and I might not like my partner to be under the influence of an illegal spell for our first sexual encounter."  
"So what, are you saying that you got off on it because it was kinky?" Ron raised his eyebrows, a trace of a grin on his lips.  
"No, I'm saying I liked it because it was you, even if you were being controlled by another."  
  
He froze as the reality of what he had just said sunk into the ether between them. Ron's eyebrows remained up, and his eyes had widened.  
  
"You said you found me attractive..." he whispered. "I didn't think you were telling the truth."  
"There is no lying under Veritaserum, he asked me a direct question based on a hunch which, I'm sure, he wasn't expecting to receive a positive answer to."  
"And now he knows."  
"Yes. I regret it."  
"Telling him or liking me?"  
"You are impossible!" Severus huffed. "Of course, telling him. And, perhaps, inadvertently telling you. I would rather have carried that little gem to my grave than admit it freely in a room of people who would only seek to abuse the knowledge."  
"And what about me, eh? Would you have told me eventually?"  
"No."  
"Why not?" Ron frowned. "If you liked me, why not tell me?"  
"I am not in the habit of telling my past students that I find them attractive. Actually, I'm not even in the habit of _finding_ past students attractive at all, if I'm honest."  
"There's a first time for everything, I s'pose."  
  
Ron reached up and rubbed his face dry with his fingers. He reappeared looking slightly mad, the red hairs which made up his eyebrows sticking out in all directions. Severus couldn't help but watch him.  
  
"I'm sorry for before," he said, his cheeks tinging pink. "For the crying. I don't... I just... I hate that they can make me do stuff like that. I hate all the other stuff, too, but at least I'm in my own mind then..."  
"There's no need to apologise, Ron. You cope with their abuse astoundingly well - I am not sure I could be as composed as you are most of the time."  
"It's all a front." Ron laughed and shook his head. "I'm dying inside."  
"Well, I'm already dead inside, and might I suggest you take preventative measures whilst you still can?" Severus gave him as much of a smile as his hardened facial expressions would allow.  
"You're anything but dead inside."  
  
Severus waited for him to continue, which Ron did after a furtive glance to see if his opinion would be permitted.  
  
"You feel things as much as I do, maybe more." Ron shrugged. "You comfort me when I'm down or I've lost it. You hold me like I'm about to be ripped out of your hands at any minute. You feel, Severus. You're not dead inside."  
  
As if to prove a point, Ron suddenly came alarmingly near and Severus' breath caught in the back of his throat. Ron leant forward and without pre-amble pressed their lips together. He nuzzled with his nose and in no time at all, it seemed, had teased open Severus' mouth and had put his tongue to work on gaining full entry. Severus gave the permission without even really considering it. His fingers had sprung up to grab Ron's shoulders and pulled him closer instead of pushing him away. Ron touched him, too, one hand creeping up the side of his neck to rest there, and the other touching lightly to the front of his captive's robe. The kiss grew steadily more wild, both of them angling for dominance and grabbing robes, sucking the other's tongue and pressing against one another.  
  
"Fuck..." Ron breathed the word into his ear when he pulled away for much needed breath. Severus sat panting against the wall.  
  
He let out a moan of surprise when Ron's tongue traced the shell of his ear before dipping into the hollow at the start of his ear canal. Damp, warm lips smooched a path down the side of his neck and sucked gently over the still-healing scars from the snake bite he'd received nearing the end of The Battle of Hogwarts. It shot pangs of lust straight to his cock and his back arched, more sharply than he had thought it still could. Ron remained over him, kissing now at that damaged patch, before moving back up, over Severus' jaw, to settle once more upon his lips. That kiss was chaste and short, and Ron sat back on his heels, looking at Severus nervously.  
  
"Was that all right?" he asked, his voice thick, his cheeks red again. "I've not... I'm not that..."  
"It was perfect," Severus interrupted, saving Ron the embarrassment of explaining. "Come."  
  
He reached out and took Ron's wrist, pulling him until they recreated their original position - Ron in Severus' lap, his face cradled against Severus' chest.  
  
"We have to be careful," Severus murmured, dizzy and hot and feeling utterly ashamed of himself. "We cannot give them anything that they can use against us."  
"But they already know... you confessed that you're attracted to me."  
"They do not need to know that it has gone further than that. I could have simply confessed a fleeting fancy - do we not, as humans, find attraction in most people we meet? Do we not find something to endear everyone to us?"  
"Not being funny, but no. You don't, and I don't. And they probably know that."  
"I don't understand."  
"Well... have you shagged your way through loads of men and women, Severus?"  
"Not for lack of want," he said ruefully, casting his mind back to many solitary episodes of masturbation in a cold Hogwarts dungeon.  
"But you haven't. You don't give it up easily. And I'm eighteen, I haven't had the chance to."  
"Give what up?" Severus found himself easily teasing.  
"It."  
"What?"  
  
Ron huffed exasperatedly and Severus couldn't help but smile. When Ron saw him his eyes narrowed with playful anger.  
  
"You know fucking well what I'm talking about. So don't be a git."  
"A female camel?"  
"Seriously, Severus, if you don't-"  
  
Against his better judgment, Severus silenced the redhead with another kiss, one which he thoroughly dominated and during which he held Ron firmly still in his lap. When they broke apart, Ron had a slightly dazed look about him and he was blushing again.  
  
"Godric."  
"What, would you like to kiss him next?"  
  
Ron laughed then, a rough and ruddy laugh in the face of their cold cell. It warmed Severus to hear it.  
  
"You're different than I thought you'd be," Ron said finally, looking at him with his head cocked to one side.  
"Would you prefer it if I returned to swearing at you and cursing your existence?"  
"No, what'd you do tomorrow then?"  
  
They smiled at one another, slightly nervously.  
  
"All I'm saying is that something nice might get us through the worst of what they have to offer," Ron said finally, jerking his head back at the cell door.  
  
All traces of his previous breakdown had disappeared, Severus noted. His eyes were no longer red from crying. The blotches which had risen in his skin were gone, only replaced by a diffusing blush from their kissing. He was beautiful.  
  
 _No. He is a Weasley, and an eighteen-year-old ex-student. He has been forced to give you fellatio under the control of another man. You cannot pursue anything with this boy._  
  
The voice was stern, and Severus knew he should listen to it. But when Ron leant into him, smelling of soap and peppermint and _man_ , his resolve seemed to crumble away. When they kissed again, it was as if Ron had shattered it with a mallet, and it was nothing but dust on their cell floor.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Does it sting?

**Rating:** NC-17 for whole fic, PG-13 for this chapter  
 **Content / Warnings:** Story warnings: Dark!fic, EWE, Canon compliant to the end of DH but Snape didn't die, Resurgent fic; _Chapter warnings: angst, mentioned torture, mind games, sexual activity._  
 **Word Count for this chapter:** ~3,321  
 **Summary:** **Every day is a test of their strength, willpower, and the desire to save their own skins.** > _> Does it sting?_  
  


**Chapter Five**

  
“They get everywhere.”  
  
Severus tried not to recoil as he watched the redhead try and prise a pubic hair from between his front teeth. There was a nauseating reality to it which made him uncomfortable. He had never been in a position to watch a sexual partner pull hair from their mouth. When he thought about how the hair had got there it only made him feel even worse.  
  
“Stop it.”  
“What, you expect me to just leave it there?” Ron laughed and shook his head. “It's annoying. So coarse.”  
  
Severus closed his eyes as Ron ungracefully spat the hair onto the floor of their cell without ceremony.  
  
It only made it more real, what they were doing. How damned _physical_ their companionship had become. _It is not a relationship. It is not._  
  
Finally, Ron lowered his hand with one final suck of his teeth. Severus repressed a shudder.  
  
“It's not my fault your pubes are like wire.” Ron laughed and then stilled, observing Severus in the shrewd way that he hated. “Sorry.”  
“Why are you apologising?”  
“Because you're upset.”  
“I'm not upset.”  
  
Ron shook his head again, but with a newfound reservedness. He shifted to sit back against the wall, next to Severus, and nudged him with his shoulder.  
  
“C'mon. Don't get upset.”  
“Don't be absurd. I'm fine.”  
  
Severus pulled his robe closer to his body and crossed his legs at the ankle. He stared at his feet. They were ugly. Most feet were ugly, he'd decided, but his especially. Bony, pale, hairy. Oddly shaped toes. Just plain ugly.  
  
“Severus...”  
“Mmm?” He kept his tone vague, as if hoping that if he showed little interest that Ron would simply give up.  
  
Ron nudged him again and left his head resting on Severus' shoulder. Severus couldn't resist the temptation to look down at him, to see the pale, creamy skin topped by flaming hair. He was partial to Ron in ways which even he didn't understand. There should never have been an attraction there. He was so young and Severus so old, their lives so utterly different. Even their hearts beat in completely different rhythms.  
  
“I don't want to sound stupid...”  
“Well, that makes a change.”  
“Shut up.”  
  
Severus snorted.  
  
“I just wanted to say that I'm really grateful for... for this. How you are with me. I didn't expect it. I don't think you did either. But I really love it. This. Us. It just makes this so much better. Bearable. If was on my own... I'd've fallen apart by now.”  
“Ron-”  
“Shut up,” the redhead repeated. “Just listen to me. Let me say this.”  
“I really don't think you know what you're saying at all.” Severus picked at a non-existent speck of dust on his robes. “You're just rambling.”  
“Don't tell me what I do and don't know.”  
“Well you're a fool sometimes, I just feel as though I should err on the side of caution.”  
  
The smirk was wiped from Severus' lips by the kiss that Ron planted on them. As usual, it was captivating, even though he was hard pressed not to think about what that mouth had been doing not half an hour before. The pubes that had been pulled from it. The obscenity which had poured from it when Severus had repaid the sexual favour.  
  
Ron pulled back but kept their lips tacked together. Severus hated the way that his heart skipped a beat when he noticed deep blue eyes staring back at him. He hadn't noticed that one of Ron's hands had fisted in the front of his robes.  
  
“I don't want to sound like a twat...”  
“Well don't speak then.”  
  
A warm, breathy laugh swamped Severus' face and he couldn't help but smile in return.  
  
“I'm really glad you're here. I mean it.”  
  
Severus' breath caught in his throat and he heard his pulse racing in his ears.  
  
“I... I really like you.”  
  
It couldn't be happening. He was not sitting on the floor of a cell with an ex-pupil who was professing affection for him. Severus refused to believe it was even possible, let alone happening.  
  
“Don't do that.”  
“Do what?”  
“Shut me out. Try and convince yourself that you don't feel the same.”  
  
Severus felt the heat racing to his cheeks and he immediately bowed his head, looking down at his lap. He didn't want Ron's emotional advances and he most certainly didn't want to respond to them, but enclosed in such a small space he knew that not offering a response would only lead to awkwardness.  
  
“Ron, you don't know what you're doing.”  
“I do.”  
“Saying, then.”  
“I know that too.”  
“No, what you're saying is borne from an incarceration with only one person who has shown you any form of kindness in the days you have been here. Some form of Stockholm Syndrome, almost.”  
“What's that?”  
“It's where you fall in love with those who are making you suffer.”  
“But you aren't making me suffer...”  
“That's a matter of opinion.”  
“Don't be daft, Severus.”  
  
Severus clenched his fingers into fists. “You don't feel this. You're saying these things because you've been starved of affection and we have foolishly grown closer together in our predicament. I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't what they wanted – if they will not try to use it against us any moment.”  
“Look, I was just trying to... say what I feel.” Ron finally went red and looked embarrassed at that moment.  
  
Severus took a deep breath and reached out to pick up one of his hands.  
  
“Look. I do not handle public displays of affection well. I have very little practice with them. I do not like them. They ask me to step up to a plate which I cannot dream to reach.”  
“Don't be a twat.”  
  
Severus could hear the smile in the words.  
  
“I was just trying to say thank you, Severus. Because I can see that you're unhappy. I just wanted to make you feel a bit better.”  
“You sought to improve my mood by offering platitudes? That only goes to show how very little you truly know me... How, if we ever escape from this hell, you will sink back into your normal life and forget about me, because you can be sure that I will be very different man once I am free.”  
“Meaning you won't touch me with a ten foot bargepole?” Ron guessed.  
“Quite.”  
  
Ron said nothing more and silence seemed to conquer and divide them, even though they were sitting shoulder to shoulder and thigh to thigh. Neither of them made to move away though Severus wished he had the courage to do so.  
  
 _You should never have let it get this far. Fool._  
  
As he sat there, staring at the opposite wall, his mind filled with vitriol, directed mainly at himself for giving into his desires, to his need for comfort. If he had continued to hold Ron at arm's length there wouldn't have been any awkwardness between them. If he had kept it solely to offering emotional support they would have continued as they were.  
  
 _Fucking cards._ Whether irrationally or not, Severus saw the presentation of the tarot cards as the start of his downfall, which he presumed his captors had planned. They had unnerved him, woven into his mind and played him like a fiddle. _Classic idiot._  
  
A phantom throb came from the finger which Ron had been forced to cut off shortly after their capture. Severus glanced down at it. He knew he was lucky that the wound had not become infected – and in turn, that he was lucky to still have a hand left at all.  
  
The silence seemed to swell until it was pressing against his eardrums and even the sound of his own pulse began to drive him mad. Severus wished it away, willing for death to come to him purely to save him from the tension in the tiny little cell. The building ache in his chest didn't help, either.  
  
“I'm-”  
  
Ron was cut off by the door swinging open. Severus hadn't heard footsteps approach so he wondered if someone had been outside their door for some time – and with a sick swooping in his stomach, he began to realise what that person might have heard if they'd been there for hours without their knowledge.  
  
“Up, Weasley. And out.”  
  
Ron got wordlessly to his feet and headed for the door. Severus began to follow him up but the guard's words stopped him mid-air.  
  
“Not you, Snape. Just Weasley.”  
  
 _Shit._ Severus took in the formal, elaborative robes that the guard wore. _Ceremonial. Shit._  
  
And suddenly, he regretted that he had pushed Ron away. He leapt to his feet regardless of the guard's instruction and stared hard at Ron, trying to take him in. Ceremonial robes and a request for only one of them meant only one thing in Severus' mind – impending death. He was looking at Ron for the last time. He shivered and realised that his body had broken out in a cold sweat. Ron looked at him, his face impassive.  
“See you later,” the redhead said finally.  
“Ron-”  
  
“Come on.” The guard grabbed Ron's upper arm and yanked him out of the door, which slammed shut behind them.  
  
Severus listened to their retreating footsteps as an emotion that he didn't entirely recognise built in his gut. He hit the closed door with both hands out and the sting shot down through the bones of his wrists and forearms. He didn't feel it, though, and he hit the door again, hissing through his teeth in anger.  
  
Only when he stood back and looked down at his hands did he realise that he was shaking. He buried his face in the trembling digits and fought the urge to scream aloud into his skin. If the cell had felt awkward before Ron left it was nothing to how oppressive it now felt. They had both spent time alone in the room before their treatment had improved, but it had never felt as terrifying as it did at that moment. Severus looked at the table with its half-played chess game through his fingers. It didn't take much to drum up an image of the redhead sitting there, brow furrowed, chewing his bottom lip in concentration.  
  
A stream of garbled swear words tore from his lips before he could call them back, before he could rein in his control.  
  
Throwing himself onto one of their mattresses, which had long since been pushed together, he curled up into as tight a ball as his bones would allow, keeping his limbs close to him and his eyes shut. Another shiver passed through him even though the cell was relatively warm as they had been treated to heating spells since the Veritaserum incident. The silence of the cell pressed down on him, crushing him into the floor. Pressing his face into the fabric of the mattress, Severus wondered if any man was strong enough to survive the suspense. He certainly didn't feel strong enough, and he had endured more suspense than most in his thirty-eight years of life.  
  
 _Thirty-eight years of misery, more like._  
  
Scowling at his self-pity, Severus found himself thinking of Ron, and even worse, imagining what might be happening to him at that precise moment. He was alone. They were in ceremony. Would death come quickly to the eighteen-year-old, or would they drag it out? How much pain would he suffer before the darkness took him? Severus found himself hoping that the fight would leave Ron, that he would allow himself to die quickly to prevent more suffering than necessary.  
  
 _He is young. After all he has seen, perhaps he still doesn't realise that there are fates worse than death. He will fight._  
  
Head throbbing, Severus lay listening for any hints of sound in the air. There was nothing. Not even footsteps in the distance. Everything was still except for him, it seemed, he who could not stop shaking no matter how tightly he curled into himself on the floor.  
  
Severus exhaled, hearing a tremble there too. Not for the first time in his life he found himself wishing that things had been left more amenably between him and the soon-to-be-deceased. His mother. His father. Lily. Albus. It seemed he made a habit of leaving things unsaid until it was too late to say them. He didn't know what he would have said to Ron, had he known what was coming, but it still made him nauseous to think that Ron would go to the grave thinking that his advances were truly unwelcome and that Severus hadn't enjoyed every single one.  
  
 _I did._  
  
He didn't bother to mentally add that there had been other burgeoning feelings as well. They were the feelings that had been twisting his gut for days. The feelings which allowed him to physically comfort his cell mate whilst he inwardly screamed with self-disgust. He had no idea what he really felt for Ron, but it was something, and he would rather Ron have known about something than nothing.  
  
***  
  
The sound of the door squealing jerked him awake. Severus lurched upright, sensing dampness in the corner of his mouth and trickling down his chin. The cell was dark and hours must have passed. He couldn't remember falling asleep and couldn't fathom how he had managed to do so. His dreams had been full of vivid torture and screaming redheads.  
  
“Up,” a man said. It was a different person to the wizard who had collected Ron and led him to death.  
  
 _And now it is my turn._  
  
Death was one thing that Severus found he would willingly embrace given the chance. He stood as instructed, feeling tension in his neck and lower back from the way he had slept. He rolled his shoulders and was gripped with pain.  
  
 _You have felt pain before. Soon, it will all be gone. Soon there will be peace._  
  
He wasn't even talking to himself at that point. The voice speaking from within his head was the one which had been so malevolent at times during his incarceration. Now it seemed content to soothe him into death. Severus was willing to let it. He held his hands out for binding.  
  
“No, I think you can go without today.”  
  
Severus followed him into the corridor and didn't mention the lack of a blindfold. He was heading for oblivion – he would not need the knowledge of where he had been held once there. He followed the wizard, trying to pay attention to the cold slabs under his feet, to the feel of the air on his face, to be aware of his body. Surely when he was dead, if he had the capability to remember, he would like to remember what it was like to live?  
  
They came to a halt outside two heavy wooden doors.  
  
“Wait here.” The man slipped into the room and left Severus standing alone.  
  
 _Run._ Another voice in his head whispered the word. _Run._  
  
But Severus did not run. His feet remained still on the floor and he stood waiting for his guide to return, to lead him to death. There was neither the impulse for flight nor fight trickling through his body.  
  
 _Wait for death._  
  
Severus had escaped it once recently but, he realised, he had been a fool to think that Death would not return for him. _Never one to be cheated out of a soul._  
  
The doors opened before him and he was beckoned inside. He would have laughed at the absurdity of it, being invited so cordially to his own grave, if he'd had the energy to control his facial muscles. Fear blossomed into his heart when he remembered what he might be confronted with – blood, Ron's mutilated body, dismembered body parts. He had seen it all and worse in the past.  
  
As he drew level with the front of the crowd gathered in the room, however, what he found himself looking at proved to be more catastrophic than all of it. He felt his innards freeze as he took in the scene, as he saw what had been happening for the past few hours.  
  
Ron hadn't fought. He wasn't beaten, bruised or bloodied.  
  
Ron wasn't even dead.  
  
He was standing beside Rodolphus Lestrange, clean shaven, washed and fully dressed in black clothes. His eyes were as impassive as they had been on leaving the cell, but with an added hardness offset by his stiff jaw and unsmiling mouth. In his hand, Severus saw, a wand was clenched. His own. Severus remembered watching it roll away as they were both restrained on the castle battlements. He recognised the light coloured wood and distinctive pattern.  
  
Severus thought back to the emotive teenager he had forged a connection with in the cell and saw none of him left in the hardened figure in front of him. There was no hint of recognition or care.  
  
 _Oh, god._  
  
Shame flooded him faster than he realised it could. Faced with the reality of what a fool he had been, he felt himself begin to shake again. Ron had never felt for him. Nothing had been real. It had all been leading up to this. How long had the boy been planning the betrayal? How long had he been set on the course of Severus' destruction? Severus could not pinpoint when things had changed. It had all seemed so gradual, seemed to make so much sense that they would grow closer during their confinement and learn to feel for one another. He had tried to deny that reality, but it had been happening, and now he was laid bare in front of Ronald Weasley and Rodolphus Lestrange who were an oddly impressive couple together on the raised dais.  
  
Ron, who would know exactly how to break him from the snippets Severus had shared in the cell.  
  
There would be no quick death for him. No such luxury would send him on his way to the other world beyond the veil.  
  
“I see you are as surprised as I was,” Rodolphus said, his lips twisted in his trademark, unhinged smirk. “But not as pleased. Oh, how delighted I am to have a new follower, especially one as beautiful...”  
  
There was not even a flicker of disgust in Ron's eyes as dirty fingers caressed one of his cheeks and settled on his lips as Rodolphus stood up. The older man sauntered down to where Severus stood and looked him in the eye.  
  
“Does betrayal hurt, Snape? Does it sting? Do you want to throttle him or throttle yourself for being a fool?” Rodolphus laughed. “Your betrayal of the Dark Lord was felt like this, in fury and pain. You will feel it too.”  
“I already am,” Severus said involuntarily, hating the croak in his voice.  
“Ron. Come.”  
  
Fingers beckoned and there were soft footsteps on the stone and the swishing of leather. Severus wanted to look away when Ron appeared in front of him but couldn't drag his eyes away from the pale face, long nose and darkened blue eyes.  
  
“Why don't you treat your friend to a little gift, hmm?” Rodolphus said casually, tracing his finger along the line of Ron's shoulders. “Show him how you really feel?”  
  
Ron answered by raising his wand. There was a split second where Severus allowed his eyes to beg, but his plea was ignored.  
  
“Crucio.”  
  
There was such power in the spell that Severus knew nothing of the physical pain, only darkness.  
  
  


**End of Part One**


	6. Chapter Six

**Pairing/Characters:** Ron Weasley / Severus Snape, mentioned past Severus Snape / OFC, **Ron Weasley / Rodolphus Lestrange**  
 **Rating:** NC-17 for whole fic, NC-17 for this chapter  
 **Content / Warnings:** Story warnings: Dark!fic, EWE, Canon compliant to the end of DH but Snape didn't die, Resurgent fic; _Chapter warnings: angst, mentioned torture and rape, mind games, implied other character deaths._  
 **Word Count for this chapter:** ~3,024  
 **Summary:** **Every day is a test of their strength, willpower, and the desire to save their own skins.** > _> "Hush, gorgeous.  I think you're beautiful."_  
  


_ Part II _

  
Chapter Six  
  
Ron stifled a yawn and arched his back off the bed. The movement didn't even make Rodolphus twitch. He wondered if all those with such blood-spattered consciences slept so soundly.  
  
The urge to act flowed down through his fingers and Ron fought it, clenching his hands into painful fists. He could act, he knew. He could pull the pillow out from beneath his head and press it over the sleeping wizard's face. Rodolphus would be dead before he even thought to fight. He could do it.  
  
 _When did it become normal to consider committing murder?_ The whispers of reason floated through Ron's mind and he sighed, relaxing back into the luxurious mattress.  
  
Everything about Rodolphus' chambers screamed luxury and it was so wrong when Ron thought of the misery he and Severus had lived in for so many days, and that, for all he knew, Severus might be living in again.  
  
Once more his fists clenched and he exhaled hard through his teeth. He could kill Rodolphus. Easily. But he'd never make it out of the building alive. He didn't know enough of it yet to make a decent escape attempt. As far as he could tell from the structure and decoration, and the few brief glimpses of the outside world he'd had through a window, he had assumed they were in an old Muggle building, perhaps a warehouse, or maybe from the snatches of yeast he sometimes smelt on the air, in an old brewery building. Inside it had been completely transformed by magic and those within it. He and Severus had been kept in what was the basement, which explained the dankness and the tiny strip window which had been on street level far above their heads.  
  
Ron could only imagine what sort of protection the building had on it, both anti-Muggle and against everyone who would seek them out. He had not been near the basement since the last time he had left the cell. There were several staircases and Rodolphus' room was in the upper levels. Ron had a room of his own but had not yet spent a night there since he'd made his decision.  
  
He'd spent every night since with Rodolphus. He was lying in the man's bed and not his own, completely naked. One arm was flung over his belly, trapping him in place whilst Rodolphus slept on. Ron wouldn't have moved, though, even if he'd had the grace to. It was oddly easy to lie next to the man who had been his captor and spend time in his company. It was even easy, as Ron had learnt, to let the man touch him intimately. The crazed showman of the meetings disappeared once the door closed behind them.  
  
 _Thank Godric. This would be much harder if he was like that in private._  
  
Ron would be the first to admit he was surprised. There seemed to be no perverted obsessions in Rodolphus' mind. They'd had sex several times, but each and every occurence had been very straightforward and, as far as Ron knew, completely standard. He'd expected to be beaten again, to be brutally handled as he had been thus far.  
  
Rodolphus was warm cuddling into his side. There were blankets across his legs but Ron was naked to his knees and he didn't feel the need to cover himself. He was tired but, he felt understandably, he was wary of closing his eyes around the other wizard.  
  
There was also the problem that every time he did close his eyes he saw Severus' look of utter horror as he realised quite what had been going on in the time that Ron had not been in the cell with him. It made Ron sick to the stomach to think of it, to see the betrayal so raw on Severus' expression. He had betrayed him, and now Severus was alone in Merlin-only-knew what state, presumably thinking about nothing else.  
  
Ron tried to swallow away the tightness in his throat and failed. He breathed hard through his nose and tried to calm down. He knew he couldn't afford to let Rodolphus see any outward displays of panic, lest he start investigating as to why.  
  
 _But he's as bonkers as a box of frogs anyway._  
  
It was both fascinating and scary to watch Rodolphus' inner madness come to the fore when they were alone. Ron had first noticed it one night as he'd been bathing in the bathroom adjoining the chambers. He'd heard Rodolphus ask a question, and before he could open his mouth to get him to repeat it, he had carried on as if his question had already been answered. After several repeat performances Ron had twigged who he was holding a conversation with – Bellatrix.  
  
 _What's a bit of anxiety when you're talking to your dead wife whilst bonking the son of the woman who killed her?_  
  
The absurdity of it made him laugh under his breath and his eyes flitted to the side, checking that Rodolphus was still asleep.  
  
“Don't jump so prettily,” the man muttered as Ron started, his breath brushing over Ron's face with a sour scent. “Are you afraid of me?”  
  
Fighting to get his brain in gear quickly, Ron shook his head. “No. You just surprised me. You sleep like the dead and then bang, you're awake.”  
  
Rodolphus laughed himself and leant forward, pressing his lips to Ron's. Burrowing his head back into the pillow, Ron opened his mouth to receive the older wizard, ignoring the smell of his breath and focussing instead on the hot hand which slid down to rest over his cock. A strong squeeze came next and he pressed up into it, looking for more friction. It always pleased Rodolphus when he sought out pleasure. Ron had thought it would be near impossible to pretend.  
  
 _And yet, you don't even have to pretend. What sort of sick fuck are you?_  
  
He distracted himself from the voice in his head by reaching down and clamping his own hand over Rodolphus'. The man pulled up and looked down into Ron's face, smiling a smile which was not the mad grin Ron had known him to sport, but a soft, almost loving smile which reached right to his black eyes.  
  
“Hello gorgeous,” Rodolphus whispered, bending down to nip wetly at Ron's throat.  
“Hi...” It was all he could muster considering that the hand around his dick had started to slide up and down, expertly massaging around every ridge and vein.  
“Hi yourself.”  
  
Another kiss, another squeeze, and then pumping so fast that Ron felt his control slipping away with each gasp. He had gone from never having sex or anyone touch him sexually to fully experienced in a matter of weeks. He couldn't deny that when he wasn't being raped, or taunted, neither his time with either Severus or Rodolphus had been without their pleasures.  
  
 _Sick fuck._  
  
“Oh no, no, no...” Rodolphus crooned. “I see that look in your eyes. Just give in. Just _feel_ it and come for me.”  
  
There was a special depth to the man's voice when he spoke at such times. A richness, a gravel in the tone which made Ron shiver. He wondered if it had made Bellatrix shiver too, how many times she had come for the man in his arms.  
  
“You know I want you filthy,” Rodolphus mouthed into his ear. “Want you to come all over yourself. So hard. Can you do that?”  
  
Ron found himself unable to answer as a spring seemed to release in his stomach and a grunt broke out of his lips before he could call it back. Rodolphus had encouraged him to be loud. Ron found some odd pleasure in denying the man the satisfaction. He could be made to scream, he knew, and hoped that he would be able to judge the situation before it got that far. But at that moment he couldn't have stopped for anything, as he arched his back again and that time sent come all over his lower belly.  
  
“That's it,” Rodolphus hissed happily into his ear, breath hot and wet on the sensitive flesh. He kept his hand busy as Ron squirmed through his orgasm.  
  
When it was done, he lay panting, and then Rodolphus shifted, throwing himself across Ron's torso and pinning him down. He tried not to react as the tickle of the man's tongue cleaned his skin. He'd never thought about anybody doing that to him until the first time that Rodolphus had done it. He almost liked it.  
  
Eventually Rodolphus prised himself upwards and then settled back along Ron's side. Fingers came up to play in the sparse red hair on his chest and Ron felt his cheeks colour, succumbing to the self-esteem issues which it seemed would never go away.  
  
“Hush, gorgeous, I think you're beautiful,” Rodolphus teased, tweaking one of his nipples.  
“Flatterer.” Ron forced his lips into what he hoped was a sultry grin and then let out a little chuckle.  
  
Rodolphus' hand slid down onto his arm and traced fingers across his skin. Ron held his breath for a moment, wondering if his secret exercise regime might be discovered. During the day when Rodolphus disappeared and he spent time in his own room, Ron had taken to developing an exercise routine to try and get some of his strength back. He had no idea if he was doing the right thing, having never really needed to keep himself in fine physical fettle. There weren't many feats of athleticism needed for being a keeper and being slim, borderline too thin, had always come naturally to him. But even he could tell that his time spent sitting in the basement cell had done him damage. His breath was short climbing the stairs of the building and his stamina seemed to be shot.  
  
Then there was the depressing matter of his magic, which had also suffered. He had been granted a wand – not his own – and was allowed to do magic under the watchful eye of those around him. They'd never said as much, but Ron knew they were watching him. That no matter how enamoured their new leader might be, the other members of the resurgence party did not trust his new found allegiance as much. To try and earn their trust, Ron had done nothing more than summoning charms, shaving charms and some other simple magic. The great feat of torturing Severus with the Cruciatus Curse had nearly knocked him off his feet. Ron still didn't know how he had kept himself upright.  
  
So he had been working when alone to try and strengthen himself, but was frightened that his efforts might be noticed. Only Rodolphus had seen him naked since, however. The other men had left him alone since he'd been marked by the leader as his own.  
  
“I wish you'd come to a decision earlier,” Rodolphus said, interrupting his train of thought. “You could have saved yourself so much pain and humiliation.”  
“You could have stopped them...” Ron countered, forcing himself to give a playful grin.  
“And deny my men such succulent meat?” Rodolphus brought Ron's hand up to his mouth and began to kiss it.  
“Ah but by the time you got to it, it was spoilt.”  
“Never.” A nip captured the skin of his wrist.  
  
Ron paused for effect before carrying on. “Well, I'm here now. I wasn't sure then. But I am now.”  
  
He froze as Rodolphus' gaze turned on him with such piercing effect that he wondered, not for the first time, if he was a Legilimens. Ron regretted never asking Severus about his ability. Perhaps then he would have known if someone was reading his mind or trying to get in. There were many things in his mind that Ron did not want made public.  
  
As quickly as it had come, the look was gone, and Rodolphus suddenly huddled closer, pulling Ron into his arms and nuzzling against his cheek. Once more, it struck Ron how easy it was for him to pretend. Perhaps he wasn't even pretending – perhaps he really did like the attention and affection.  
  
 _And you're taking it from him. What's wrong with you?_  
  
“I've been thinking...” Rodolphus started, running one finger down to rest in Ron's belly button.  
“Must have hurt.” Ron gave as much cheek as he dared.  
  
Rodolphus treated him to a short laugh and the shake of his head which told Ron when he was approaching the invisible line which might ruin everything between them.  
  
“We're going to have to do something about your little friend down in the cellar.”  
“Snape.” Ron couldn't help the way his heart began to thump hard in his chest, and he hoped that Rodolphus wouldn't lift his hand up and feel it.  
“The men are getting restless... I think they could do with a new plaything. They're desperately missing you... now that you're all mine.”  
  
A cold edge ran through the last words and Ron repressed a shudder. He did not want to belong to Rodolphus. He did not want Severus to be given to the animals that had treated him with so little regard, either.  
  
“If you really want to play with Severus Snape, you won't break him by giving his body to men against his will, like you would have broken me if it had gone on much longer.”  
“Oh, you poor sweetheart,” Rodolphus said, his voice dripping with sarcastic malice.  
  
The twists and turns of the moods of the man by his side forced some resilience into Ron's gut. The words, the affection, they were all complete rubbish. He would dabble in them as long as it suited him, and not a minute longer.  
  
“If you want to break him, leave him alone. Feed him. Let him use the loo and have a wash. But leave him alone. He'll fall apart at your feet the second you decide to finally pull him out of that room.”  
“What if he kills himself before I get the pleasure?”  
“He won't. He's got more pride than that.”  
“I want to rip him of that pride. He let the Dark Lord die. He betrayed us. He should pay. He should hurt.”  
“He will,” Ron promised, rolling onto his side and making sure that he pressed himself into the other wizard's body. “You will mind fuck him to the extreme. And that's how you really, really break Severus Snape. Your little trick with the tarot cards nearly unhinged him then and there.”  
“Mm, maybe. I'll think on it. I need to think of a way to keep morale up, though.”  
“Have you thought about taking someone else?”  
  
Ron knew he had to tread carefully. He was desperate for information. He was longing to get his hands on a copy of the Prophet, or even the Quibbler would do. He just needed information. He needed to know whether his family were alive. If Harry was safe. What, if anything, had happened to Hermione. But he couldn't ask. He couldn't appear anything other than committed to the cause to which he had given himself – the complete downfall of everybody he loved and held dear.  
  
“We'd love to. But unfortunately since they were stupid enough to let you troll around on your own, they've been guarding the others under lock and key. Not idiotic enough to dangle prizes out where we can grab them. So you're all we've got, but I have to say... I couldn't have asked for better. Nothing will break Potter better than your betrayal.”  
“I know.” Ron permitted himself a small, nervous swallow to try and get rid of the tension building within him.  
“And I know you must be curious. I know that in a war, people change their sides but their hearts are slower to follow. I know you must be desperate to know of your family.”  
“I am,” Ron whispered, before he could stop himself.  
  
Rodolphus looked at him again, with the same piercing stare. Searching for any chinks in his armour. Ron raised his chin and met his eye.  
  
“I'm sorry,” Rodolphus said finally, looking away. “I'm sorry to be the one to tell you that there's nothing left.”  
“W-what?” Ron stammered, feeling as though he'd been tossed naked into a barrel of iced water.  
“There's nothing left. Nobody left, I should say.”  
“But you just said that they're guarding them-” he cried, his voice rising with panic.  
“There was nobody there that we wanted to take. Nobody that mattered enough. We managed to break into that shack you lived in. Killed every living soul within the boundaries. Even slaughtered the pigs and the chickens. Ate them for dinner that night. We even sent you some, down in your little hovel.”  
  
Ron decided that how he felt must be like how it felt to die painfully, to not have the grace of slipping away in sleep. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't blink. He couldn't speak. He felt suffocated.  
  
The pillow had been pressed over his face and he was dying in silence.  
  
Rodolphus extricated himself from both Ron and the blankets which had twisted around their bodies. He swept a robe around himself and belted it at leisurely speed, not openly showing that he was at all affected by the death taking place in his bed. Ron watched him through stinging eyes.  
  
“I hope that you were serious about joining us, Ron. There's nothing for you to go back to, except Potter. And he's nothing without his loyal band of big hearted, thick headed followers. You're with us, or you're completely on your own. And if you choose the latter, you'll shortly be dead.”  
  
The door shut behind him and Ron finally allowed himself to crumple, folding in on himself from every angle possible. His ribs ached as he drew his knees up to his chest and held them tight.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Every day is a test of their strength, willpower, and the desire to save their own skins >> Loneliness is mind-numbing.
> 
> Content / Warnings: Story warnings: Dark!fic, EWE, Canon compliant to the end of DH but Snape didn't die, Resurgent fic; Chapter warnings: angst, mind games, dub-con, felching.

Ron had always assumed that the time he'd spent alone during the Horcrux hunt, after his abandonment of his friends, would be the loneliest time of his life. Nothing he had known before that moment had matched up to the crushing pressure on his lungs and the sickened feeling in his stomach. Yet, as he wandered around the hallways, he felt even worse. Rodolphus had been away for what felt like weeks even though it could only have been days, and Ron didn't want to think that he might miss the man who was essentially his captor.

Thoughts of the syndrome that Severus had mentioned rolled around his head. Ron blanched. He might need company, but he would wait for Rodolphus to return patiently if it didn't mean he was attached to him in any way, shape or form.

Even so, that realisation couldn't stop the fact that he seemed to be as feral as a stray cat, roaming around the old building, scavenging for both food and entertainment. He had been walking around it for days, but with each one that passed he seemed to find something new. However, that day, with a rumbling stomach, he was content to explore further along a corridor which he assumed housed the kitchen from the food-like smells which lingered there. Nobody had ever told him it was off limits and so he was going to find food, as much for something to do as to alleviate the ache in his belly.

He traced his fingers along the edge of the door handle before pressing down on it. Nothing happened.

“Bollocks,” he muttered, feeling like someone had smashed his dreams apart.

Sad that a single trip to the kitchen is the only thing you're looking forward to in a day.

Seconds after his fingers left the handle, it began to glow a brilliant red, presumably to confirm his denied entrance. Just as he was turning away, however, a small hole appeared in the bottom of the door and an elf-like shape appeared in it. Large eyes stared out at him and he recognised bat-like ears which, forever more, would remind him of Dobby.

“Er, hi,” he said, his voice coming out in a croak. He hadn't spoken for a good while. “Is this the kitchen?”

The elf nodded and blinked.

“So... I was wondering... I know it's not the usual meal time, but I got up late, so I'm hungry now and-”

The elf stepped back and the hole in the wood disappeared.

“Oh, nice.” Ron couldn't help but feel affronted.

The door opened and the elf beckoned him inside. Ron followed it and looked around what turned out to be a vaulted room with huge ovens and chimneys. It was nothing compared to the Hogwarts kitchens, but he supposed that the elves had less mouths to feed and didn't need the extra space. There weren't as many actual elves, either, when he looked around. Suddenly, he realised that about twenty pairs of wide eyes were staring at him.

“So... what I can I, um, have?”

None of them replied. Ron waited for one of them to offer him something specific but they continued to stare. Unnerved, he wrapped his arms around himself and looked closely at the elves. There was something odd about their mouths. Many of their lips were dry, the corners full of dry skin. It looked like none of them had spoken in a very long time.

“Oh fuck,” he whispered to himself in horror. “You can't speak, can you?”

One elf shook its head and then walloped itself around the same for doing so.

“Did they curse you?”

Another elf repeated the same action as it's workmate.

“Did they remove your tongues?”

As one, all the elves nodded and suddenly, Ron wasn't hungry any more. The thought made him want to heave, but even more, the thought of what Hermione would say made him want to sob.

“I'll... can I just have a ham and cheese sandwich, please?” he asked, ignoring the creak in his tone. He knew asking for the food would make the elves happy, even if he didn't really want it.

They scurried off, even though it would only take one of them to make the sandwich. To keep his mind from wandering, Ron wandered himself, sauntering over to some shelves laden with bottles with different coloured liquids. Some of them were labelled 'food colouring' and others as fancy oils he had never heard of. Only after a few moments of looking at them did he realise that it was another mistake. Looking at the array of multi-coloured bottles, he thought of Severus and the potions lab he had manned during Ron's time at Hogwarts. He had actively tried to avoid thinking about Severus stuck in their cell, alone, surely going slowly mad. A lump thickened in his throat and Ron swallowed it away.

He jumped a nudge to his thigh and looked down. An elf was offering him a platter of sandwiches about five-deep, decorated with different flavoured hand-cooked crisps around the sides.

“Wow,” he breathed, taking it with both hands. “Thanks. I really appreciate it.”

They shepherded him towards the door and held it open for him. Too quickly Ron found himself in the hallway with more sandwiches than he could ever have wanted. “Bollocks.”

Taking care not to drop anything, he made his way back along the hall and up a flight of stairs. He was hoping he could find the room he had in mind again, but didn't have much hope seeing as he'd failed the day before. He was reasonably confident he knew where he'd gone wrong before, though, and took a left instead of going right. He could smell the strength of the cheese in the sandwiches and his stomach gave a rumble again.

Ron allowed himself a little cheer when the door he was looking for, made of dark wood, came up on his right. He pushed into the room and set down the plate. He pulled his wand from the waistband of his jeans and took a deep breath. The spell for the fire rolled over his tongue like silk, like he'd done it every day for the whole of his wand-owning life. But the magic which spilt out of his wand was far less satisfactory. The flames stirred from nothing in the grate, but they were paltry.

Luckily they started to catch on the logs which were a permanent feature, charmed to burn when ignited and to die when extinguished. The room brightened slightly. Ron made his way around, lighting the candles and trying not to feel a failure when he failed to manage a few of them. The books which lined the room came into view in the dim light and Ron held his breath, trying to fight off the memories which rushed at him – of Hogwarts, of his grandfather, of Hermione.

He grabbed the platter and sat down in an armchair by he fire. He guessed that the room had been magically enlarged, but there was no telling what it had been before the Death Eaters had moved in. Ron had originally wondered why they would want a library, but a closer look at the shelves had answered that for him. They were full of books worse than, what, he assumed, were in the Restricted Section at Hogwarts. Those books had been restricted, but there was the chance of actually reading them if you got permission from a teacher.

There was no doubt that even a single book in the makeshift library would be considered suitable for a student to read. Ron had gleaned that from opening just three and reading the titles of the rest. A little shudder rocked through him and he picked up a sandwich to move on.

Ron ate mouthful after mouthful, attempting to keep his mind clear. He wished he'd thought to ask them for a drink and nearly dropped a crisp when a goblet of pumpkin juice appeared on the table next to him.

“Cheers,” he toasted himself with a sneer, and knocked some back.

He continued to eat his way through the plate until his belly took on a new ache completely. His appetite was nothing compared to what it was before they were captured, but he'd still made a sizeable dent. He placed it on the table and closed his eyes, leaning back in the chair, letting one hand massage his belly.

It was the first time he'd felt even mildly content since Rodolphus had disappeared. At least the sex was a welcome distraction from the continual hurt he felt since he'd been told about his family.

No. No. Think of something else.

He threw himself to his feet and forced himself to look at the books again. The entire section that he was looking at appeared to be devoted to poisons. Some of them seemed to be leaking thick liquid and he gave those an extra-wide berth. One caught his eye, however, and Ron used his finger to hook it out of place. The cover fell open in his hands. Imprinted on the front page, he recognised the Black family crest. He'd seen that crest enough times in the summer before their fifth year to never forget it. Arrogance, evil and mania. That was what the crest meant to him. Yet, it also meant love, due to Sirius, whom Harry had loved and then lost, far too quickly. Harry.

Ron snapped the book shut and shoved it away. He couldn't afford to think of any of them if he wanted to keep his guard firmly up. He couldn't break down.

He was at the door by the time he remembered the plate and goblet, but when he looked back over his shoulder, they had already disappeared. He sent a spell to extinguish the fire and candles and left, letting the door bang behind him.

***

Feet aching, Ron exhaled and leant against a wall. The temperature was cooler down in the lower half of the building and that was his only indicator of where he was. Somewhere along the way he'd finally succeeded in clearing his mind, but with his thoughts had gone his sense of direction and time. He closed his eyes and, childishly, wished for someone to take him away from it all, to swoop in and rescue him like the stories in the comic books he'd read as a boy.

You're only eighteen. Still a kid.

He didn't feel like it. Huffing he pushed away from the wall and carried on down the darkened corridor. Only when he stumbled over a rough patch of flooring did he stop and looked down. He recognised that uneven floor.

With unfolding horror, he realised that he was close to the cell where Severus was. Heart in his mouth, he couldn't help but run, knowing exactly where he was heading, but not what he would do when he got there. His breath came in short gasps and he felt colour rising to his face. He stopped dead outside the door and thought he might throw up.

Without prompting, his hand reached out to touch the metal, but a small flash and a pulse of energy rushed through his bones. They'd put a shield charm on the door. He immediately began to panic, waiting for the sound of approaching footsteps, coming to seize him. Nothing came, however, and Ron stood deadly still, hand still outstretched. He began to wonder if Severus could hear him. Words blossomed onto his tongue and Ron opened his mouth to call out.

Something stopped him. He had no idea what sort of state Severus was in on the other side of the door. Whether hearing Ron, after his betrayal, would make things worse. Ron desperately wanted to explain himself but the words wouldn't come easily and he didn't know if they'd be welcome anyway.

Heart thudding in his chest, Ron battled with his mind. His mouth was open again when there was a loud thud from somewhere above him and he leapt about a foot off the floor.

“Shit,” he hissed through his teeth and threw himself down the hallway.

He tripped over his own feet as he started up the stairs which would take him back to the realms of safety. Being discovered outside of his old cell with no good reason might well see him thrown back in it and then nothing would ever change. They would be held until they were of no further use, and Ron knew that Severus was already fast approaching that line. Lungs burning with the effort of legging it as fast as he possibly could, he continued up until he thought it would be safe. Then, looking left and right, he edged along to one of the communal bathrooms and jumped inside, locking the door behind him.

And then, silently, he put his fingers in his hair and tugged until he thought his scalp might split, and the pain became all-consuming.

***  
“You're quiet tonight.”  
“Am I?” Ron looked up over the rim of his wine goblet.

He was sat on the other side of a small dining table, eating alone with Rodolphus. When he'd finally dared to extract himself from the bathroom, he'd walked as calmly as he could back to his rooms and found the man looking for him. It had been three hours since then, and after a meeting, Rodolphus had decided that they would dine alone. With the good wine, whatever that meant.

Ron was finding it impossible to get rid of the mournful day he'd had. He missed everyone. The prospect of them all being dead was too much to bear. The thought of Severus alone was too much to bear. His fingers tightened around the stem of the goblet and he looked down at the blood-red liquid. It wasn't bad. He tipped the goblet back and gulped it all down. A hovering pitcher immediately filled it up again, which went the same way as the first.

“Tell me what's wrong,” Rodolphus said, sipping from his own drink. “Let me make it better.”

I want you dead and my life back.

The bitter thought failed to shock him.

“I've just been a bit lonely while you've been gone is all. Had to start talking to myself for company.”

Like you, you fucking nutter.

“Poor, sweet boy. All depressed and sad-looking.”  
“Am I?”  
“So forlorn you could have your own tragedy.”

When you get bored of playing with me, I'm sure I'll have one.

“Come here.”

Ron went. There was no reason to resist. He perched on one leather-clad leg as Rodolphus clearly wanted, and tried not to shiver when one hand curled around his hip and the other stroked up his thigh. Rodolphus nuzzled into his throat and pressed a kiss there, his beard tickling the skin. Ron, starved of both company and affection, turned his face into the wizard's hair, which was relatively clean after an intensive grooming session after his trip. Ron bit back the urge to ask where they had all been. He didn't know if it was his business to know that, or how his question would be received. He felt too fragile to find out.

“I bet I know how to make you feel better,” Rodolphus whispered in his ear, giving a little lick to his earlobe. A hot palm settled over Ron's crotch. It squeezed. “I can fuck some life back into you, sweet one.”  
“Could you?” Ron breathed, tipping his head back and exposing his throat. He groaned as it was nipped.

“Off you get.” The instruction was curt and Ron obeyed, standing to one side as Rodolphus got to his feet and reached for a waiting wine bottle.

He dragged it from the table, letting it swing loosely by his side as he headed for the bedroom door. He swigged from it as he passed through the doorway, looking back over his shoulder at Ron. Swallowing, Ron wiped his palms on his trousers and followed, wondering how many times he would be fucked that night, and how many times he would come. The thought sent his pulse racing and made his neck hot. Sex was the only thing that seemed to make him feel alive. The rest of the time he was just a walking corpse.

I might as well be dead.

Rodolphus was lying on the bed, having shed his coat, shirt and shoes. He had one knee up and was leaning back on the sumptuous pillows. He was still swigging from the bottle of wine but offered it to Ron as he neared. Ron toed out of his shoes and pulled his own top over his head. He knelt onto the bed and took the glass in hand, putting it to his lips and trying not to think about what Rodolphus might have done with those lips whilst away from him.

With a prickle of horror, Ron realised that he was jealous at the thought of the wizard having sex with someone else.

“Why so scared, precious?” The bottle was taken back from him. Rodolphus loved to drink.  
“No, sorry, I just... I'm miles away tonight.”  
“Well, that'll never do,” Rodolphus drawled. He reached out and popped open the button of Ron's trousers with one finger. He used the body of it to drag down the zip and then caressed what he could find through Ron's pants. “I think we should wake this little fellow up, and have some fun, don't you?”

Ron nodded, not trusting his voice to stay steady in the face of the building lust in his balls and the fear in his heart over what he felt about Rodolphus. He allowed his trousers to be dragged down over his hips and thighs and started to worm out of his underwear. Rodolphus took over and helped them to clear his feet but didn't throw them aside.

Instead, he brought them level with Ron's mouth and put their faces close together. “I've been dreaming about how you'd sound gagged and fucked to the hilt,” he whispered, extending his tongue to flick at Ron's lower lip. “What do you think?”  
“With my own underwear?” Ron said dubiously, struggling to remember when he last changed them.  
“Yes. I'd like that.” Rodolphus' eyes took on a possessive gleam and Ron knew that there would be no negotiation. “I'd like that very much.”

Ron had no choice but to open his mouth as the material was stuffed into it.

“I trust you can keep that in without help?” A playful threat was laced into the tone.

Ron nodded. He was overwhelmed by his own scent floating up into his nostrils. He'd never had the cause to smell himself so intimately before. It wasn't unpleasant, but it was most certainly odd. He didn't protest as Rodolphus turned him over, pressing his face into one of the pillows. Ron rolled his hips and moaned into the fabric.

“Slowly does it. Wouldn't like you to finish too quickly, would we?”

Ron choked as cold, slicked fingerpads pressed against his hole, holding his breath as Rodolphus probed him. The man was rougher than usual.

“I've missed you so much,” he said, making Ron grunt as he pushed harder into the resistant muscles. Two slithered in at once and pain blossomed from the stretch. “I've dreamt of this since the night I left, fucking you until you scream. Are you going to scream for me, sweetheart?”

Crying out as fingers pressed against the tiny nerve bundle deep in his body, Ron acknowledged that his muffled scream sounded hot. Really hot. He shivered.

“Good, isn't it?” Rodolphus began to piston his fingers in and out, moving faster and faster until Ron was panting through his nose, desperate to spit the pants out and breathe through his mouth.

He mumbled his agreement and moaned when the fingers disappeared. Without missing a beat, Rodolphus lined up behind him and grabbed his hips, yanking them back and upwards, forcing Ron to rise up onto his hands. The man slammed into him, rocking him forward and Ron allowed his eyeballs to roll upwards into his head. There was no ceremony, no slowness, no care. The bed banged against the wall with each thrust into his arse and he felt down into his balls and through his cock, right to the pit of his stomach. A clumsy, half-greased hand found his erection and began sliding up and down, pumping it, finding the ridges and veins in the flesh. Ron felt saliva drip over his lips from behind the gag and moaned harder.

“You little whore,” Rodolphus hissed into his ear. “Fucking taking me like a whore. Do you want it harder?”

Ron made to reply but his tongue tangled around his pants and he spat it out by accident.

“Naughty naughty,” Rodolphus crowed. A thick-fingered hand slapped over his mouth and pulled his head back. Ron couldn't help but respond to the rough touch.  
“Fuck me,” he mumbled into the man's skin. “Fuck me hard.”  
“I'll fuck you all right.” There was a laugh. “I'll ride you till you cream yourself over and over, pretty whore. So fucking pretty. I'm going to fill you up and suck my come from your hole. And then I'll do it all a-fucking-gain-”

There was a split second of silence as they both froze, passing the point of no return, and a final slam from the other man's hips made Ron spunk hard over the duvet beneath him. Rodolphus seized him around the middle and gripped him hard as he finished, shooting seed deep into Ron's body. It seemed to go on forever, extending second by agonising second as the man cried filthy words into his ear. Ron collapsed forward, landing with a winding thump on the bed, and he was squashed by the older man on top of him. A dazed groan trickled into his ear and he shivered. Come clung to the flesh of his belly and he tried to get used to the damp heat accompanying the softening cock in his bowel.

“So pretty,” Rodolphus crooned to him. Teeth bit into Ron's shoulder and stayed there just a few seconds long to be pleasant. Ron knew it would bruise. He was being marked.

“Don't ever fucking think you are the only person I use and fill with my come,” the man spat, sitting up and viciously pulling Ron's cheeks apart. “Because you're not.”

Ron panicked. Had the man read his mind?

“It was written all over your face.” Rodolphus' cold, cruel laugh was back. “And really, precious, it's none of your business.”

Ron cried out in shock as a hot tongue slithered through his sphincter and buried deep within him. It thrust in and out, carrying away the proof of their union, rough and cruel in pace and sensation. Harsh fingers tugged at his balls, yanking them back, intended to cause pain. Only when he tried to shift did he realise that Rodolphus had managed to wordlessly bind him to the bed, and he was trapped in the most undignified position, having his dignity cleaned out of him by an unforgiving tongue.

Hot tears rose in his eyes and he tried to blink them away. They trickled onto the duvet beneath his face. He had failed. He was breaking.


	8. Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Content / Warnings: Story warnings: Dark!fic, EWE, Canon compliant to the end of DH but Snape didn't die, Resurgent fic; Chapter warnings: angst, mind games, semi-public sex.  
> Summary: Every day is a test of their strength, willpower, and the desire to save their own skins >> Ron is in over his head. And he can't get out.

There was a crackle of tension running through the air. It made the hairs on the back of Ron's neck stand to attention and caused him to shiver. Rodolphus hadn't said anything to him, but there had been a coolness between them since _that_ night.  
  
Ron swallowed on a thick throat as he remembered it. Strapped to the bed, Rodolphus had kept him there for hours, tormenting his body with pinches and slaps and bites. Some of the marks were still there, not least the purpling bruises around his wrists and ankles. He hadn't been released until Rodolphus' stomach rumbled and then the cruelty seemed to leech out of him. He had almost-lovingly released the binds and massaged wrists, ankles, even Ron's scrotum until he was practically crying with relief. Then there had been kisses, so many kisses that Ron had lost count, and then a slow, gentle fuck.  
  
After that they'd parted, and the coolness had settled and been there ever since.  
  
Conversation had been limited; for the first time (barring when Rodolphus had been away) Ron had been sleeping in his chambers alone.  
  
He heard voices from round the corner and stopped for a moment, dragging himself up to his full height, squaring his jaw and shoulders. He had to look strong, even if he was crumbling inside. As it turned out, being left alone had done nothing for his self-esteem, his mental wellbeing, or his ability to cope with the situation at hand. He had begun to crave company; what scared him was that he was willingly considering seeking Rodolphus out – or, worse, the company of some of the man's followers.  
  
He rounded the corner and saw huddles of Death Eaters talking. He sidled up to one group and tried to hear what they were saying, but there was no need.  
  
“Ron.” Rodolphus drifted around the corner, limping slightly, smiling crookedly at him. “There you are. I've been searching for you.”  
“Have you?” Ron tried not to look too keen as an arm went about his shoulders, pulling him close into Rodolphus' side. They fell into step together and Death Eaters parted to make way for them.  
  
Something like satisfaction tingled within him. Ron felt heat rise in his cheeks.  
  
“What's going on?” he asked, turning to speak directly into the wizard's ear. He knew he would get more out of Rodolphus if he spoke to him intimately. “And where've you been? I've missed you...”  
“Have you been lonely, sweet one?”  
“Mm.”  
  
Rodolphus steered them into the event chamber and quickly closed the door before anyone could follow. His back slammed into the wood with a thump and air puffed out of his lungs. Rodolphus was in his face in a second, but there was no malice in his expression, only lust, with low-lidded eyes.  
  
“I've missed you too, sweet one. Let's not fight again, mm?”  
  
Ron took the kiss and tried not to like how quickly the other man's tongue unfolded into his mouth. He did, however, let his hands come up to rest on leather-clad shoulders, and a moan to croak out of the depths of his throat. It was comforting, the steady pressure of another body against his own and the intimacy which Rodolphus wanted to share. When they parted, the air was heavy with breath. A hand reached down to palm his cock through his jeans and Ron bit his lip, pressing forward with his hips and tipping his head back against the door.  
  
“Fuck, you're so pretty,” Rodolphus whispered to him. “I want to take you to bed, this minute.”  
“Then why don't you?” Ron breathed, placing his own hand over Rodolphus' and grinding it into his crotch.  
“Oh, to live a life of decadence,” Rodolphus agreed. “To retreat to bed and stay there forever, fucking you forever...”  
  
Things were rapidly spiralling towards Rodolphus having him there and then, Ron realised, as Rodolphus slammed against him and bit hard into his throat. With only an admittedly heavy piece of wood separating him from privacy and being fucked openly – something which he had been afraid of since he had become Rodolphus' toy – anxiety took hold in his blood.  
  
“I can't wait,” Rodolphus burst out. Ron nearly fell over as the man tugged his wrist, pulling him towards the throne at the head of the room.  
  
Fast fingers opened his jeans and shoved them down to his ankles. Ron held his breath, realising just how cold the chamber was. Rodolphus loosened his own trousers and threw himself into the throne, curling one hand around an already-erect cock. He stroked it several times, never taking his eyes off Ron, breathing hard through his nose.  
  
“Sit on me.”  
“Here?” Ron looked around, stomach turning.  
“Here,” Rodolpus confirmed. “Now, sit.”  
“But-” Ron had been about to protest about the lack of preparation when a spell shot through his back passage, icy cold and probing. The spell had been used on him a few times and he hated it more with each passing event.  
  
He shuffled forward awkwardly, his jeans restricting movement. “Wait-”  
“Oh, for Salazar's sake,” Rodolphus spat, losing patience. “Turn around”.  
  
Ron did; fingers grabbed his hips with bruising force and dragged him back. He lost balance but landed in Rodolphus' lap. He felt a hand fiddling underneath him and eventually twigged what the man wanted. He tried to prepare himself but a loud moan broke free of his lips as Rodolphus entered him, in reverse. He gasped a few times, trying to acclimatise to the feeling of the cock being the wrong way round in his body. Rodolphus' breath started to pant over his neck and Ron moaned again, seemingly unable to stop. He looked down and saw fingers wrapping around his erection. They wasted no time in starting to milk him, moving up and down, squeezing the head, each time making it more purpled and teasing creamy drops to form in his slit. A thumb purposefully moved to spread them around and Ron hissed at the sting, moving his hips back. A ragged cry came from behind him.  
  
“Move,” Rodolphus commanded, straight into his ear. “Ride me, whore.”  
  
It was hard to find leverage, but Ron did the best he could, moving his hips up and down and steadying himself with his hands on the arms of the throne-like chair. The pressure tightened on his dick and Ron choked out, a noise which filled the entire chamber and must, surely, have gone through the wooden door.  
  
His suspicions were confirmed when there was a noticeable dip in the chattering from the hallway and when he cried out again, his body cringed with shame.  
  
“Let them know I'm fucking you,” Rodolphus whispered. “Let them know that the Weasley boy is mine, I own him, I fuck him whenever I want. I fill him with my come and I fucking wank him and I make him scream my name. Do it. DO IT.”  
  
Whether it was the words, or the fisting of his cock or the thick rod stuck in his body, Ron couldn't help but comply. A mix of screams, cries and begs burst out of his mouth and he lost track of what he was saying, except for the man's name, over and over, until he gave himself over to the lust, and came. Hard. Everywhere.  
  
A tight arm wrapped around his waist and pulled him back. Rodolphus seemed to converge around him, holding him so fiercely that Ron found it hard to breathe. There was no question that the older wizard was close, desperately close, trying to wrangle every last bit of pleasure out of their union that he could. Ron suddenly felt limp and protected, held there as the man fucked him, and when teeth bit down hard at the juncture of his neck and collarbone, he keened to ceiling.  
  
That seemed to finish Rodolphus off. There was a hard, roughened grunt from deep within the wizard's throat, and then he was shaking, panting, pouring himself into Ron's body.  
  
“Fuck,” Ron mumbled, the room spinning about his head. “Fuck.”  
  
A shaky laugh came from his shoulder, where he realised Rodolphus' face was pressed.  
  
“You're always so good at stating the obvious, sweet one.” There was a brief kiss to his neck and then a push to his back. It was over. “Up. But don't clean yourself. I want to go through this meeting knowing that my come is sliding down the backs of your thighs. And then when it's over, I'm taking you to my chambers, and I'm going to fill that pretty, loud mouth with more come and fuck you again.”  
  
Ron staggered to his feet, feeling so very strange as he pulled his trousers up and rearranged himself back to what he hoped was tidiness. There would be no hiding, though. He knew that everyone would have heard them and that had clearly been Rodolphus' plan. It had been good, but Ron swallowed, embarrassed. He was eighteen and in his opinion, unattractive. He was sure that the Death Eaters would laugh at him instead of anything else that they might do. They would mock him for being a fucktoy.  
  
And he should be at home, as far away from being a fucktoy as anyone could ever be. And Severus Snape would not be buried in the bowels of the building, either. He absent-mindedly reached out for the wall to support himself as dizziness truly claimed his body. He heard the door open, the followers pouring into the small chamber. His name was spoken, once, twice when he didn't respond, and louder.  
  
“Ron?” Rodolphus' face came into to view, and to Ron's surprise, he actually looked concerned. “Speak to me.”  
“I don't... I don't know what...” Ron felt vomit rising up his gullet and clamped his mouth shut.  
  
But he choked, doubled up, and spewed all over the floor, missing Rodolphus' dragonhide boots by millimetres. The wizard leapt backwards but kept a hand on Ron's shoulder. Ron heaved over and over again, wondering how there could be so much sick in his belly when he'd barely eaten anything for days. There were murmurs running riot all across the room. Ron found himself desperately wanting to lie down.  
  
“Get up,” Rodolphus said quietly in his ear. “Stand up straight, stop throwing up, and come and sit by my side. You need to be here for this. I will coddle you later.”  
  
He walked away, leaving Ron bent over by the wall. Taking several deep breaths, Ron forced himself upright, blinked the gathered tears out of his eyes and reached up to wipe his mouth. He followed Rodolphus to the head of the room, where he had only just been fucked. He caught sight of his semen on the floor and his stomach lurched again. He fought it, successfully, and stepped up to stand behind Rodolphus, who was now seated.  
  
Ron used his fingers to grip the back of the throne and felt better for it. Rodolphus glanced up at him and Ron jerked his head in the tiniest of nods.  
  
“Welcome one and all,” Rodolphus called. “I thank you for your patience. I have been, uh... otherwise occupied.” A titter ran through the crowd; Ron kept his eyes on the back of Rodolphus' head. “But now we must attend to business. We have gone weeks without striking our enemies where it hurts them most. We successfully captured two figures close to the Potter boy's heart, one of whom is now ours. It is time to decide how we deal with the other.”  
  
The tension thickened. Ron could almost taste it. He suddenly felt even more nauseous, knowing that that Severus' fate might well be decided then and there in the next few minutes. Somehow it had been easy to forget Severus during the sex, when Ron himself was receiving some form of physical comfort, no matter how rough it might have actually been. He felt so ashamed of himself. His eyes began to burn. He blinked rapidly, terrified that he would cry in front of them all.  
  
“I have decided that he will die,” Rodolphus announced, keeping his voice measured and low. His fingers caressed the arm of the throne. “By the methods of his own hand, perhaps a poisoned chalice, I haven't quite decided that part yet. But his death is unimportant to me. The message it will give is another matter.”  
  
“My lord, what is your intention?”  
“To strike Potter where it hurts,” Rodolphus responded immediately. “We will kill Snape, here in this very chamber. There won't be any ceremony and we will do no more damage to his body. He will be damaged enough by then.”  
“My lord?” a man closest to the throne asked, his brow furrowed.  
“Well, our newest friend here...” Rodolphus reached back and grabbed the only part of Ron he could reach – his hand – and pulled. “After this meeting, Ron will be visiting our dear friend Severus in his cell. He will tell him that he is to be released. That Potter has bargained for his release.”  
“And what will be the manner of this bargain?”  
“That Weasley here stays. I am quite confident that my young friend here can give a performance good enough to make Snape believe him. He will suffer my extreme disappointment if I catch even a whiff of betrayal.”  
  
Ron stiffened as the grip on his hand became crushing.  
  
“Hope is a dangerous spark to create,” Rodolphus went on, not loosening his hold on Ron. “Then, in a few days – I have a specific poison I wish to use, and it will need to be brewed expertly...” he indicated a specific Death Eater with his free hand, who nodded once and smiled. “One which will make Severus Snape be glad of death. One which will make him re-live every traumatic event in his miserable life before the darkness comes for him. We will summon him here, under the pretence of giving him a message to pass onto Potter. We will find some way of forcing him to drink, or eat something – perhaps we will send no food or water until then, and he shall die, and we will watch.”  
  
Trying not to vomit, Ron saw smug smiles being exchanged all over the chamber.  
  
“And when he is dead, Ron will deliver the body to a designated place. We will entice Potter there with the hopes of getting both of our hostages back. Ron will give the body and will then return to us. He can make it clear that he won't be returning. And then we will move on with the next part of our plan.”  
  
Ron didn't hear what happened next. All he heard, over and over, was the fact that he was going to have to see Harry, and whoever was with him, and walk away again.  
  
 _You could just stay. Betray him._  
  
The response would be ugly. Fatal. Everyone he loved, if they weren't already dead, would die. Ron knew he would not be able to stay behind.  
  
***  
  
The metal cell door looked even bleaker than ever. He couldn't believe what he was about to do, or that Rodolphus was making him do it. All Ron could taste and smell was his own sick. He desperately wanted a drink but Rodolphus had insisted that he go to Severus immediately. Looking down at the key in his hand, Ron chewed into his lip. He didn't know if he was as good an actor as was required. His fingers shook as he extended the key towards the keyhole. It rattled. Severus would have heard it. He turned the metal, meeting no resistance. The door swung open. The wards had been altered to let him through, unlike the last time he had tried to touch the door.  
  
The cell was much like it had been when he'd left it. There was a table with food and a pitcher of water on it. There were thin mattresses on the floor in the corner. Ron presumed the piss pot was still behind the door. Severus was on his feet, impossibly pale, impossibly thin and looking terrified. Ron slipped inside and pushed the door closed so slowly that it made no noise when it eventually shut.  
  
“Severus,” he whispered, wondering if somehow Rodolphus would be monitoring the room. But nobody had even accompanied him to the cellar. “Oh fuck.”  
  
The last time he had seen Severus, he'd tortured him with the Cruciatus curse. Therefore, when Severus launched at him, but didn't attack him, Ron was stunned. The man wrapped him in his arms and held on tightly. Ron responded in kind, touching his hand to limp hair. The smell of Severus enveloped him, bringing him comfort like he remembered it had when they had been incarcerated together.  
  
“Why are you here?” the voice which spoke was broken, and Severus was shaking in Ron's arms.  
“I'm... I've got some good news,” Ron murmured. “They sent me to tell you that... that in a couple of days, you're going home.” _In a body bag._ “Harry's done something to secure your release.”  
“What? What's he done?” Severus pulled back, his eyes narrowing.  
“I don't know. They don't tell me that sort of shit. But you're going home, Severus. This will be over.”  
“What about you?”  
  
Ron took a deep breath. “I stay. I think that's the whole deal, to be honest. You go back, I stay. They think that'll hurt him the most, it'll weaken him. It'll ruin him, or they're hoping it will.”  
“But why would Potter trade for me and not you?”  
  
Ron shrugged. Severus' shrewd mind was going to rip apart the rotten lies if he wasn't careful.  
  
“I want to stay. I want... I'm staying, Severus, and it's my choice.”  
“You've been brainwashed,” Severus said immediately, shaking his head. “Ron, you don't want this.”  
“I want it.” Ron nodded. “I'm... I'm doing well. I'm working alongside him. People respect me here.”  
  
Severus stared at him. Ron looked straight back, trying to appear cold.  
  
“Nobody respects me at home.”  
“Are you really going to throw your life away over schoolboy emotions and insecurities?” Severus asked, incredulous.  
  
Ron shrugged. “Whatever I do, it's none of your fucking business. I'm just the messenger, Snape. See you in a few days. He turned, pressing his fingers to the metal. It sprang open.  
  
“Ron... please... don't do this?” Severus begged softly, his voice low but forceful. “You aren't this person. Whatever they're promising you, it's a lie.”  
“Goodnight, Severus.”  
  
Ron stepped into the hallway and slammed the door shut, pulling the key out of the lock. Horror quickly crept up on him. He didn't know what was worse – the lie he had just spun, or the fact that Severus had so quickly believed the worst of him. He wanted to stop, to fall apart, but he knew he was expected back upstairs as soon as possible.  
  
He rubbed his stomach, and forced one foot in front of the other.  
  
***  
“You've done well today,” Rodolphus murmured into his ear.  
  
Ron kept his eyes on the wall, concentrating on the heat of the bath and the scent of the oils floating on the surface of the water. Rodolphus was behind him, stroking his shoulders, chest and stomach. Ron had taken a potion for the nausea and scrubbed his mouth until it was stinging. Then he'd drunk a lot of wine to make it all better.  
  
He was drunk, but not drunk enough to be ill again.  
  
“I'm sorry I was sick though,” Ron said finally, leaning back against the older wizard.  
  
The bath was enjoyable, he couldn't help it. It was hot and relaxing and Rodolphus was strong around him, and was pampering his body and pandering to his mind.  
  
“Why was that? Are you unwell?”  
“No... I think... with the fucking... and everyone coming in... I'm not used to everyone knowing the exact second I've jacked off.”  
  
Rodolphus laughed and kissed his cheek. “I couldn't help but show you off. They're all jealous. They all want you. But you're mine and they haven't got a hope in hell. I'm sorry to have made you uncomfortable.”  
“I enjoyed the fuck.” Ron grinned. “A lot.”  
  
“I know you did...” one hand moved south and groped him through the water.  
  
Ron closed his eyes and tried not to think about what the following days were going to bring. He concentrated on Rodolphus working him to full hardness, and enjoyed it.  
  
“You should know, when I get powerful, my sex drive gets somewhat... out of control.”  
“Oh?” Ron held his breath.  
“My wife compared me to a bitch in heat.”  
“And how did she cope with you?”  
“My wife was like a bitch in heat all of the time, it was no never mind to her. We fucked all day long, once. All we needed was wine and each other.”  
“Do you miss her?” Ron whispered, before he realised quite what he had asked.  
  
Rodolphus did not respond with the anger that Ron expected. He seemed to deflate. He drew Ron more closely to his body and held on tightly.  
  
“I do,” he murmured. In that moment, Ron could only listen to the deep silence of the room. He didn't know what to say, or do, to make the fact that his own mother had killed his new fuck buddy's wife any better. There was nothing which _would_ make it better, except his true committal to Rodolphus' cause.


	9. Chapter Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Every day is a test of their strength, willpower, and the desire to save their own skins >> Death. The Tower. The Devil. The Hanged Man.
> 
>  
> 
> Content / Warnings: Story warnings: Dark!fic, EWE, Canon compliant to the end of DH but Snape didn't die, Resurgent fic; Chapter warnings: angst, mind games,mentioned (not explicit) non-consensual sex, major character death, character injury, language.

Something had to give, he realised. He should have expected it. Ron coughed chunks into the toilet bowl, all the while trying to keep silent. The bathroom door was shut but Rodolphus was only feet away. It wouldn't fare well for Ron if he was discovered, throwing up in fear, just minutes before their whole existence came to a climax.  
  
He willed his stomach to strengthen and got shakily to his feet. He wiped his lips on the back of his hand. He winced at the acidic taste in his mouth. Ron looked at himself in the mirror.  
  
Tall. Skinny. Paler than he'd ever been in his life. His hair was beyond recognition in terms of length. His mother would have a fit when she saw it. His stomach clenched as she appeared in his mind's eye, clucking her tongue and shaking her head disapprovingly. She might never have the chance to practice her self-taught hairdressing skills.  
  
Ron laughed to himself under his breath. To say she had skill was a bit of an overstatement, really, as the family photo albums demonstrated.  
  
 _This is nearly all over. After today, it's done. No going back._  
  
He repeated the mantra in his head, staring hard at himself in the mirror above the sink. He clenched his fists and then relaxed them. His fingers were shaking. He repeated the move three times until he could extend the digits without a hint of tremor. Satisfied, he put his hands in the pockets of his dragon hide trousers and exhaled.  
  
He turned and stepped back into Rodolphus' bedroom. The man was lazing on the bed with one leg up and one hand tucked under his head. He had his mad, lopsided grin on and Ron knew what kind of mood the wizard was in. He was going to get his blood, metaphorically speaking, and he would enjoy reaping the rewards. Ron smiled at him and perched on the edge of the mattress. Rodolphus picked up his hand and laced their fingers together.  
  
“Do you think he knows what's coming for him?” Rodolphus asked.  
“Snape? No. He looked so relieved when I told him he was being released. I think he'd had enough long ago. First bit of hope he was offered, he took it. Not surprising really.”  
“Good. I've been waiting years for that slimy bastard to fall from grace and I get to be the one that pushes him. I loathe him.”  
  
Ron glanced at the clock. They had fifteen minutes until Severus' execution was due to take place in the ceremonial chamber. Ignoring the churning of his stomach, Ron forced himself to make conversation.  
  
“Why do you hate him so much? Aside from the obvious... that he was working against...”  
“Even under my protection you still cannot say my old master's name?” Rodolphus asked, eyebrows raised.  
“Well. I didn't know whether to go with working against Voldemort, or with working against you.”  
  
Shivers rocketed up his back as he spoke the name of the wizard he had been brought up to fear. Perhaps his family now called him Lord Voldemort, like Harry did, now that the fear was no longer there. Ron hadn't had the chance to fall into the practice. He'd been taken just days after the end of it all.  
  
“I hate him for both things,” Rodolphus agreed. “I hate that we were right about him – we never trusted him and our Lord never listened. I hate that I stopped Bellatrix from murdering the man in his sleep years ago.”  
“Well, today, you can watch him die for her.”  
“Mm. I wish she was here with me to see it.”  
  
Ron said nothing but squeezed the hand linked with his own.  
  
“Of course, at first, I loathed you too. But you turned out differently to my expectations.”  
“Oh?” Ron grinned.  
“I must say it's rare I'm wrong about someone. I thought you'd go to your grave squealing blood traitor propaganda, that your very blood would sing with it. I have been pleasantly surprised.”  
  
Ron kissed Rodolphus when the man rose up to meet him. Warm hands cupped the back of his head and held him in place. He tasted wine. His belly roiled. Rodolphus seemed to take forever to have his fill. When they parted, Ron's lips were stinging and he was dangerously close to vomiting in the man's lap. Rodolphus looked at the clock.  
  
“We must go.”  
“I think I must have eaten something dodgy.” Ron reached down and rubbed his stomach. “I just need the loo again. You go up.”  
“Shall I wait?”  
“No.” Ron made a good show of wincing as he stood up. “Might be a while. Don't start without me?”  
  
“Wouldn't dream of it.” Rodolphus pulled him close again. “You're the second star of this show, Ronald Weasley. Today, you come into your own. Today you declare for us and give yourself to me completely. I can't wait.”  
“Neither can I,” Ron whispered.  
  
Rodolphus embraced him and then pulled away, heading straight for the door. He left without a further word and Ron immediately went to pieces, tugging on his hair and succumbing to the crushing pain spreading through his body.  
  
He had a job to do. He had a job to do well.  
  
He was terrified.  
  
***  
  
Ron had heard little of Rodolphus' rousing speech thus far. He leant against the back wall of the chamber, arms folded over his chest, fingers burning with anticipation. The Death Eaters hung off his lover's every word and Ron allowed himself to look from face to face, assessing the different levels of adoration or pleasure that the listener was taking from the words. It struck him as strange that there were no women in the room, only men. Had the women decided enough was enough and left? The Malfoys were nowhere to be seen. From the titbits that Ron had managed to learn, they had all but disappeared from society. They certainly wanted nothing to do with Rodolphus, husband of Narcissa's sister. Ron wondered if that stung.  
  
He jumped as he heard his name and saw fingers beckoning him forward.  
  
“And we have gained a young star through all of this. An unexpected, burning star, with magic and knowledge which I am sure will be of great use to us as we continue. For it doesn't end here.” Rodolphus got to his feet. Every last soul in the room was hanging on to his every word. “We will fight until our dead are avenged. Until those who cut them down are bloodied, mutilated and rotting where we leave them. Until we have three bodies of theirs for every one of ours that was murdered!”  
  
His voice had risen to a shout and echoed in the chamber. Ron stood there, heart thumping, suddenly unable to keep from listening like everyone else.  
  
“We shall succeed, and we shall govern, and our world will be a better place without the blood traitors, mudblood scum and muggle-loving filth that clogs the arteries of our fine breeding!”  
  
Shouts rang out in agreement and Ron swallowed. He thought of his family subjected to the sort of vengeance these men desperately wanted.  
“And tonight we win a small victory. Tonight we shall see the death of a man who betrayed us, who betrayed himself with the love of a Muggle-born woman. And we shall revel in the dismay of our enemies when they learn that one they love has left them for good and joined us in our cause.”  
  
A hand slapped hard on his back and Ron winced. He forced a smile.  
  
“So let us waste no more time. Bring the prisoner in!” Rodolphus bellowed, and the doors at the end of the chamber were opened.  
  
Ron's heart sank when he saw that they had not even given Severus the courtesy of a wash and fresh robes to be murdered in. He didn't know how he knew, but he sensed it would be important to the wizard who had looked after him so tenderly during the first weeks of their captivity. Severus was frogmarched into the room and thrust down at the feet of the dais on which both Ron and Rodolphus currently stood. The thud of his kneecaps made Ron shudder. Severus stayed down without command and the doors were closed.  
  
“Do you have any last words, Snape?” Rodolphus sneered. “Any regrets to lament? Sins to confess? Pleas to give?”  
  
Severus said nothing.  
  
“I thought it fitting that you die by your own hand,” Rodolphus said casually, strolling back to his throne and throwing himself in it.  
  
He took a small, purple vial out of his pocket and rolled it between finger and thumb.  
  
“Do you remember this little gem?” he continued with an unsettling grin. “Do you remember why you developed it?”  
  
Severus gave a terse nod.  
  
“So... you remember what it does then?”  
  
Another nod.  
  
“This...” Rodolphus called to the room at large. “This is one of the most painful poisons ever produced. It had predecessors but under the Dark Lord's command, Severus Snape developed this. A super poison, if you will. A poison which makes each breath a scorching fire, a poison which scrapes away at both bone, muscle and organ alike from within. And yet it is odourless. Tasteless. Untraceable. Select wizards and witches met this end in the time of our Dark Lord, thanks to the man in front of us. People who had to die, but who deserved more than a quick killing curse. And now, he shall die by the same.”  
  
A roar of approval filled the chamber. Ron felt sweat beading on his brow.  
  
“An adventure brought to him by the boy who left him to be with us. Ron.”  
  
Holding onto his breath, Ron reached out for the vial. It was so delicate that he envisaged snapping it. He made to close his fingers around the glass when it tumbled to the floor, rolling towards the back of the dais. He hissed under his breath as it teetered on the edge, threatening to fall. It did, but did not shatter, much to his relief. Ron ducked down to pick it up.  
  
“You all know what happens after Snape has died his painful death. We go to Hogwarts and flaunt his body. We are expected. Ron. Now.”  
  
Ron walked around the dais to stand in front of Severus. Dark eyes stared up at him. Ron knew he had been selfish to hope that there would be no fear in them, that Severus would be ready for death. It would be so much harder to do it, with Severus looking like that.  
  
“Sure you have no confessions, Snape?” Rodolphus offered.  
“I have no sins to confess more dire than any you have committed,” Severus said. “Or the one you're about to force this boy to commit.”  
  
The word 'boy' stung, Ron found. He used his anger to get him through working the stopper out of the vial. He stared at the purple liquid.  
  
“Come on, we don't have all day!” Someone shouted and the crowd laughed.  
“He's losing his bottle.”  
“Ron, do it now, please.” Rodolphus' voice was hard and steely. He seemed to agree with the commentator in the crowd. “ _Now._ ”  
  
Ron looked down, catching Severus' eye.  
  
“Ron. You don't have to do this.” Severus shook his head.  
“Yes I do,” Ron responded, reaching out and tugging on stringy black hair. Severus' eyes immediately closed and Ron was glad.  
  
His thin-lipped mouth opened enough for Ron to tip the vial into it. He immediately flung the glass away when the liquid was all gone and he stepped back, terror consuming him. He nearly broke as the first pained scream pierced through the chamber. Then the laughing started. A warm hand squeezed his shoulder as Rodolphus got up to relish the sight of his prisoner in the agonising throes of death.  
  
***  
  
The wind was cold on his face. Ron had no idea how long he'd been inside for. The fresh air should have tasted sweet after so long, but all he felt was sick. He also felt exhausted, as though there was no blood in his body. He desperately wanted to lie down but his part in Rodolphus' charade was not yet over. He had to deliver Severus' body. He was grateful that they'd been on a schedule – that there had not been much time for anyone to do anything to the limp form except for spit on him and kick him about a bit.  
  
“Ready?” Rodolphus asked, pulling his mask into position over his face. The sight of it made Ron shiver. Faceless. White. They were new. Change was good, apparently. He would see them in his nightmares forever more. “You know what you have to do?”  
  
Ron rolled his eyes and nodded, hoping that his smile came across as cocky and playful, rather than forced and maniacal. He felt the latter. He felt like he could rage with the insanity in his mind.  
  
He bent and picked up Severus' body, which lolled limply. He couldn't help but support the man's head. It seemed too awful to let it flop along over his arm. They began to walk in silence. Stones crunched beneath the boots of his Death Eater clothing. They should have been warm enough to keep the chill out but still Ron shivered. They rounded a bend in the road and there it was – Hogwarts. Lights shone brightly in the windows. He fought the urge to run, to flee towards the sight of home. It would do neither of them any good to run. He squinted to see the dark shapes just inside the castle gates. He heard a creak as they opened.  
  
“We wait here. Do you remember what you have to say?” Rodolphus asked.  
“I remember.”  
“Then go.”  
  
Ron stepped forward alone. He felt every eye that bored into him. He swallowed and found his throat completely dry. He shifted Severus' weight in his hands and kept putting one foot in front of the other. He kept his eyes trained ahead, waiting for the moment when he could see who had come out to meet them. He nearly cried out in relief when he saw a flash of Weasley-red hair.  
  
It was Charlie. And beside him, Harry. He had not expected Harry. He'd expected that his best friend would be under lock and key, but there he was. As he drew close enough to read their expressions, Ron saw others lurking in the shadows of the gates. He grew dizzy. Charlie was not dead. That meant the rest of his family might be alive too, and that Rodolphus had merely lied to unhinge him.  
  
“Ron.”  
  
Hearing his name from his brother's lips made Ron weak at the knees. He again fought the urge to run and jump into the protection of the castle.  
  
 _No. I have a job to do. And I'll do it. I have to._  
  
“Take him,” he said quietly, thrusting Severus' body at Charlie.  
“Is he dead?” Harry whispered, looking between Ron, Severus' lifeless form and the crowd of Death Eaters. “We bargained on a live return!”  
  
Ron looked over his shoulder to check whether anybody had followed him. Nobody had.  
  
“He's not dead,” he whispered urgently. “You need to get him to Pomfrey, now. He's under a deep sedation and needs to medically be woken up. He needs another potion. It's...” He reached inside his dragon hide coat and pulled out the shrunken book. “Give her this, the folded down page. That's what he needs.”  
“Ron-”  
  
But Ron had already turned away. Harry's rough shout of horror broke through the calm Scottish night like a crack. He heard his name being shouted, by both of them – his brother and his best friend, begging him to come back. Ron took a deep breath and kept on walking.  
  
***  
  
Ron was drunk. Drunk on the realisation that he'd actually managed to pull it off. All around him, there were revelling Death Eaters, each inebriated and enjoying the entertainment of the Muggles that had been captured for their joy.  
  
It had been easy but fraught to figure it out. Rodolphus told him what poison he was going to use. Perhaps, like Severus himself, Rodolphus hadn't set much store on Ron's academic ability. But he'd also made the mistake of allowing him access to a vast library and a kitchen. He could never have hoped to replicate the delicate but fatal blend that Severus had spent four years perfecting for Voldemort, but he could make something else and use the food colouring from the kitchen to make it _look_ the same. That, he could do, and had done. The elves hadn't protested when he'd asked if he could use a cauldron. He'd given them some guff about wanting to make something for Rodolphus which would please their Master. He was lucky to have found such a strong sedative potion which had ingredients that he could source within the building. At very short notice.  
  
The riskiest parts had come later. Could he convincingly find a way to swap the potions, given that he knew Rodolphus would not leave the poison unattended until the very moment of its use? Could he convince Rodolphus to let him be the one to administer it? And then, as he poured it into Severus' unsuspecting mouth, could he be sure that it was going to work?  
  
Ron had never been particularly good at brewing potions. He could easily have killed Severus without trying, and for all he knew, miles away, he still might have. He had to hope that he had been successful. What had been a real surprise was the older man's screams as he 'died' – had he simply been terrified enough to cry out? Or had he instantly known that what he had been given was not the fatal draught intended for him? Ron blinked as the questions fogged his brain. He couldn't afford to lose focus now, however. He was not yet finished.  
  
He pushed away from the wall and wove through the crowd, looking for Rodolphus. The man was long drunk and Ron hoped that it wouldn't take much coercion to get him alone. He spotted him watching as a death eater molested a pretty blonde Muggle who was sobbing. Ron took his hand without asking and tugged on his arm. Rodolphus lurched after him, laughing to himself.  
  
Ron didn't answer when Rodolphus asked where they were going. He led him straight to his private chambers and opened the door. He heard the intake of breath from the other man as he saw that the entire room was filled with candles. The shadows flickering were so eerie. Ron slid inside and closed the door.  
  
“What's all this?” Rodolphus turned to him, grinning at him.  
“A celebration.” Ron sauntered up to him, laced his arms around Rodolphus' waist and looked at him from beneath his eyelashes.  
“And what's going to happen?”  
“I'm giving myself to you,” Ron whispered. He kissed an earlobe. “For tonight. For ever. Just like you wanted.”  
  
Rodolphus groaned and ground against him. Ron forced himself to laugh.  
  
“Drink?”  
“Absolutely!” Rodolphus slurred the word and turned, starting to rip at his robes and kick his boots against the floor, trying to get them off.  
  
Ron headed for a table where a bottle of vintage red sat waiting along with two goblets. He poured them both a drink and carried them back to Rodolphus.  
  
“Here.” Ron handed him one.  
“And what shall we toast, my beautiful boy?” Rodolphus grinned. His eyes were mad with drink and success. Ron swallowed.  
“Ourselves. Victory. And new beginnings.” He paused for effect. He stepped closer to Rodolphus. “I want you to properly initiate me into the Death Eaters. I want the Mark, Rodolphus.”  
  
There was a stunned silence before Rodolphus recovered himself. “Right after I've fucked you, I'll carve our name into your skin and lick the blood off. And then I'll nurse you through the pain. When you've recovered... well. Maybe we shall rule together.”  
  
Rodolphus toasted him with the goblet and then threw it back to drink from it. He gulped hard and fast.  
  
It felt like an eternity before Rodolphus dropped the drink. It splashed their boots. He gasped at the air and his eyes widened as the oxygen only increased the pain. He immediately began to choke, frothy spit began to surge out of his lips swiftly followed by blood. He fell to his knees, clawing at his throat, his chest, everything he could touch. Ron stepped back and threw his own goblet over his shoulder. He reached into his pocket.  
  
“Death.” He flicked the tarot card down in front of the dying man. “The Tower.” That card hit Rodolphus in the face. “The Devil.” The card landed on a splayed hand. “The Hanged Man.” Ron bent down and placed the last card directly under Rodolphus' eyes.  
  
He pulled his wand out. He had to hope that with Rodolphus' imminent death, the charms on the building would break. He was the key to all of it, or so it had been hinted.  
  
“I was _never_ yours,” Ron spat down at him. “I tolerated you for this, to get out. And to keep Severus alive.”  
  
A rattling breath came out of Rodolphus, a breath full of blood and fear. Ron held on tight to the borrowed wand and turned into the spot. A tight grip ringed around his ankle. It was too late to stop the transition. Ron gasped as pain ripped through his leg, the same leg he'd broken when he was fourteen. It felt as though both skin and bone were caught in a grinder, that he would surely lose the limb under the pressure of the forces pulling at it.  
  
He landed flat on his back in damp grass. The pain continued as he took in the stars above him, twinkling high in the dark Scottish sky. He reached out, groping across the blades of grass for the iron of the Hogwarts gates. He curled his fingers around metal when he found it and hoped that the alarm would sound within. Ron wanted to be found. He _needed_ to be found. He felt the heat and stickiness of his own blood glueing dragon hide to his skin. He needed someone to have a chance of surviving before he bled to death.  
  
There had only ever been one death on the cards that evening – and that had been Rodolphus'. He hadn't banked on splinching himself on the way out.  
  
“It's him!” the shout startled him into tears. Ron closed his eyes as trickles of wet relief ran down the sides of his face, dripping into his ears. He was too exhausted to wipe them away even though they tickled.  
  
Warm hands landed on him then, cupping his face, touching his hands. He heard voices, voices that he thought he recognised, but there was no clarity to them.  
  
“Fuck, look at his leg!” Someone exclaimed.  
  
The agony which claimed him as he was lifted into the air helped Ron into oblivion. There was nothing more he could do. They were both free and, dead or alive, he had managed to get Severus to safety. He had to hope that the man had been brought back, that his ruse had worked.  
  
Ron didn't know what he would do if he woke up and Severus Snape was gone.  
  
***  
  
He was glad of the heating charms on the bed. He was snuggled beneath several blankets, beautifully cocooned and Ron was content to lie there. He didn't think he was fully conscious because kept hearing high-pitched voices and apart from the house-elves, nobody he knew spoke like that. It must be the potions. He knew he'd been medicated from the residual sweet taste in his mouth. There was no pain that he could feel and was glad of it.  
  
“His eyelids are fluttering.” A voice very close to him suddenly spoke. “Get the Healer”  
  
Ron heard a chair screeching over flagstones and hurried footsteps. Healer. Did that mean he no longer at Hogwarts?  
  
“Ronnie, it's Mum.” He felt a soft hand brush over his brow. “It's Mummy. Can you hear me?”  
  
It was then that he knew he was in a bad way. He'd not called his Mum 'Mummy' since he was five, and she hadn't referred to herself by that name since he was ten. He vaguely remembered that she'd asked him a question and he tried to answer.  
  
“Stay still. You're safe now, sweetheart. Safe. We've got you.” She kissed his forehead. “And Severus is... well, Severus is here too. You're both safe. They can't hurt you again.”  
  
Ron didn't take comfort in her words. She hadn't said that Severus was alive. Just that they were both safe. He had been hurt by Rodolphus Lestrange and his men, both physically and emotionally. Yet he had willingly embraced that hurt to try and get them both out. Ever since the first rape, he'd known what he was going to do in terms of siding with Rodolphus to win his trust. Everything that had happened afterwards had been sheer chance. He hadn't really had the confidence in his own survival to think about having to deal with what would inevitably come afterwards – the explanations, the embarrassment, the hostility that Severus would surely direct at him.  
  
 _I was hurting myself. You can't stop me from doing that again._ His own thoughts were sluggish and disjointed.  
  
“You're safe now.” His mother's words echoed around his mind and Ron found they made him nauseous.  
  
When the darkness came calling the next time, he embraced it willingly. He couldn't believe he'd been such a fool as to forget the reality of what would happen should he survive. Ron had been so convinced of his own impending death, he'd forgotten to consider it. He was sure that either Rodolphus would twig and kill him publicly and brutally, or his followers would discover their leader's death and murder Ron quickly in both rage and fear. He had forgotten what it would be to survive it all.  
  
Now that he remembered, he didn't want to.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Content / Warnings: Story warnings: Dark!fic, EWE, Canon compliant to the end of DH but Snape didn't die, Resurgent fic; Chapter warnings: angst; mentioned kidnapping, torture, abuse, non-consensual sex; trauma, hospital setting.
> 
> Summary: Every day is a test of their strength, willpower, and the desire to save their own skins >> The lines have blurred. Is there a way back?

If one more person asked him to tell them what had happened, Ron thought he might combust with rage. He had told his story to everyone who needed to know but there were others who seemed content to hound him, hoping that some details might have changed since the last time they had asked. None of them were members of his immediate family, luckily.  
  
His family's silence, however, was almost as unbearable. They had learned the grisly details of his captivity, sometimes from his own mouth and sometimes from the mouth of his Healers. He was still in St Mungo's basically being brought back to life. Though he had received food with Rodolphus, his body had thinned, weakened and become unrecognisable. He had elected to stay in the hospital whilst they helped him back to health.  
  
Then, of course, there was the mental healing work they were forcing on him. Ron found it funny that they had offered to let him go home and gave him a choice regarding his physical health, but when it came to his mental health they were unyielding. They insisted that he must have experienced severe mental trauma from his ordeal, and that he would need intensive therapy to be able to exist back in the real world. Ron had no idea whether they were right or not – everything since the night he had killed Rodolphus had been a complete blur. He only knew three things.  
  
One was the pain in the leg he had splinched. The second was that his family were either afraid of him or afraid of what he had been through. The third, and worst of all, was that Severus Snape had, on regaining consciousness, refused to see him. It was torturing him as efficiently as Rodolphus had ever managed, Ron thought.  
  
“Mr Weasley?” the tentative voice of his Healer brought him back to the present, to the falsely cheery therapy room and the reality of his post-capture life.  
  
It had been two weeks since he had managed to break them both free.  
  
“Call me Ron,” he sighed finally, slumping down in the uncomfortable chair.  
“Ron, then.” The witch smiled at him. They'd had four sessions together already and it was the first time he had shown his annoyance of being 'Mr Weasley'. “Look, I don't think this is achieving anything. Do you?”  
“Nope.” He shook his head and shrugged.  
“How do you feel about the fact that we're making you do this?”  
  
Ron licked his lower lip and thought about how to respond. He knew that his every word was being analysed. “I'm not ready to talk about it yet. I've told you everything that happened but you were the ones who decided that I must have been broken by what happened to me.”  
“And you don't feel broken?  
  
He hesitated again, wondering if he should lie. “I don't feel great. I hate that Severus won't see me.” His throat grew thick at the mention of the older wizard. “I... it was horrible. I know that. But I don't want to talk about it yet.”  
“But you think you will in the future?”  
“Maybe. Maybe not. It's like at school... everyone wanted to talk about exams right after we'd finished, but it just made me feel sick. What's done is done.”  
“But you yourself have said that you're suffering from horrific nightmares regarding your time in captivity. What would happen if those dreams drove you to thinking dangerously and acting erratically?”  
“With a family like mine, do you really think I'd get away with it for long?” Ron laughed darkly and shook his head. “No. I'll be all right.”  
  
The Healer fixed him with a shrewd gaze. He met her eyes, which were of a thoroughly plain brown colour surrounded by dark-rimmed rectangular glasses. In a way, she reminded him of McGonagall.  
  
“I'd like to be able to tell you that I could send you home to recover,” the Healer said finally, setting down her quill on the pad on her lap. “But I can't do that in good faith, Ron. There aren't many people who could go through what you have without some form of emotional fallout afterwards.”  
“I'm not saying there won't be any, either.” Ron shrugged again. “But it's just not... coming out... at the minute.”  
  
The Healer nodded in understanding and smoothed her palm against one arm of the chair.  
  
“I suggest that you be moved to one of our new convalescent inpatient clinics. After the battle, as you can imagine, we received an influx of patients who were too traumatised to live alone or to stay with their families, or who were gravely but not fatally injured. We did not have the facilities here to house them here on top of our regular patients and run of the mill community emergencies. So we built new hospitals in quiet places in the country or by the sea. They've been running for the two months you were gone and by and large are very successful. The one I am thinking of for you isn't far from where your parents live.”  
  
“You want to put me in the loony bin,” Ron breathed, with shivers rippling through his skin.  
“Absolutely not,” the Healer insisted. “Because you're not mad, Ron. At the moment you're not even mentally ill. But I believe you need structured, supportive accommodation to acclimatise you back to society, back to full health and yes, to support you through any mental illness which might come for you whilst we do so. There's no element of force – you can go there willingly or you can go home. I cannot force you there as you are of completely sound mind at the moment and have the capacity to retain this information. It's your choice. And, even if you want to go home and then change your mind once you're there, that's fine too. We have a duty to look after you and we want to do it, if you'll let us.”  
  
Ron said nothing and looked down at his knees. He was wearing some pyjamas that his mum had brought in the day before. They were brand new and had never belonged to anybody else before. It was an unknown luxury to him. Perhaps he would need therapy to get used to that and that alone.  
  
“I don't know what I want,” he admitted finally, scrubbing his hands over his face. “Sorry.”  
“Don't be. You have time to decide. They're not yet happy with your body's progress and won't be releasing you for at least another week. You can have a think about it and I'll meet with you again on Wednesday. How's that?”  
“Okay.” He nodded.  
“Is there anything else you'd like to ask me?”  
“Severus.” It was the same question that Ron asked every time that he was allowed a platform to ask from. “Is he still refusing to see me?”  
“I'm afraid so.”  
“Why?” Ron moaned, his frustration getting the better of him. “I need to see him. There's so much I need to tell him.”  
“You know very well that I can't discuss another patient's care with you, Ron,” the Healer said sadly. “But all I can say is that he isn't dealing with this as well as you are. You must remember that he was left alone for a fair amount of time with nothing but his own mind and memories. The one person he had attached to, he then believed had betrayed him.”  
“But I didn't!” Ron cried, jumping to his feet. “I was just trying to save him. I didn't... I didn't do it to hurt him.”  
  
The Healer got up and put a hand on his shoulder. “You just have to give it time, Ron. It is understandable that an attachment was forged between you and that you want to see him. Just give him space.”  
  
Ron didn't respond and the Healer opened the door for him. He drifted out into the chilly corridor and pulled his jumper more tightly around his torso. It was a drastic example of how much weight he had lost during his captivity. It was nearly three sizes too big. It had fitted him before.  
  
With a sigh, he muttered his thanks to the witch and set off for the ward.  
  
***  
  
“This is going to take forever.” Charlie huffed, looking down at the board between them.  
  
Ron couldn't help his smug smirk. He shifted slightly, feeling the beginnings of a dead leg. They'd been sitting on his bed for hours, playing the same game of chess. The problem was that they were the best chess players the family had and a match between them often turned into a gargantuan battle. Ron loved it, and just then it was what he needed, sitting on his bed in his private room on the ward. He needed normality and watching Charlie scratching his head whilst muttering under his breath was just the ticket.  
  
Time was knocking on and it was dark beyond the window. London was twinkling merrily away in the July night. A gentle breeze floated through the very slight crack that the hospital permitted his window to open. Ron suddenly had an urge to be outside. He was only just beginning to realise how much he had missed fresh air. The Resurgence Death Eater headquarters had been completely sealed up.  
  
A loud yawn broke through the silence of the room. When Ron looked at Charlie he saw drooping eyelids and bloodshot eyes beneath.  
  
“It's late,” he said immediately. “Let's carry on tomorrow.”  
“I can go for hours yet.” Another huge yawn marred the words and Ron laughed.  
“Go home, old timer.”  
“I'm only twenty-six, you little shit.”  
  
Ron snorted and carefully picked up the chessboard. He walked it to the table just beyond the end of his bed, perching it between the get well cards and fruit which appeared mysteriously in his room every day from no obvious benefactor. When he turned back to face his brother, Charlie was watching him with a sorrowful expression.  
  
“What?” Ron muttered, folding his arms over his chest protectively.  
“You were always a skinny little bastard but now... now it's beyond that. You look like you're going to break.”  
“I'm not,” Ron reassured him, easing back down and trying not to let the pain from his joints show on his face.  
  
It was the cold, they were telling him, of the cell, which was causing the gnawing pains in his bones. And the malnutrition. And the stress.  
  
On the bedside cabinet, the clock's bigger hand ticked over to midnight. Charlie ran his hands though his hair, sending it more wild than ever. It was longer than Ron had ever seen it. Charlie caught him looking and grinned.  
  
“Yeah, I know. Mum's been too distraught to hack it all off. I won't say I've found a good use for Fred kicking the bucket and you being kidnapped, but... well...” he held his hands up and shrugged.  
  
It felt good to laugh, Ron realised, as it bubbled up out of his throat and shook his frame. Charlie smiled with him and reached out to prod his shoulder.  
  
“Thanks for being here tonight,” Ron said, hoping that he sounded genuine.  
  
He must have done, because for a fleeting moment pooling moisture reflected the candlelight in Charlie's eyes before it was blinked away.  
  
“I'm just so glad that you're back.”  
  
Ron didn't see it coming when Charlie grappled him in a bear hug, holding him so tightly that even _he_ wondered if his bones would hold up under the pressure. When Charlie didn't release him, Ron fell still, trying to make sense of the fact that his pulse was quickening, that he was growing hotter and that deep in his belly he felt sick.  
  
He didn't know that he was shouting until Charlie pulled back, eyes wide and expression frightened. He kept his hands on Ron's shoulders and Ron reached up to tear at them before he recognised what he was doing. Everything had taken on the sound of being underwater. Charlie was trying to reason with him, begging him to calm down, but Ron couldn't stop fighting. He felt his fist sink into the relative softness of his brother's gut and then the door to his room burst open and a spell hit him. He landed awkwardly against the pillows, banging his head on the metal railing at the top of his bed. Charlie was still sitting with his hands outstretched, even though Ron was no longer in his grasp.  
  
A MediWitch poured something down his throat and almost instantly he began to relax, sinking into the mattress until he felt like he would puddle onto the floor. Surely, he was no longer made of bone? He could do nothing as someone grabbed his ankles and brought them up onto the bed. Peoples' hands rearranged him, made him comfortable, brought the blankets up to his chin. The warmth was compelling. Only when a clammy hand touched his brow did he open his eyes and looked up into Charlie's afraid face. There was more than moisture in his amber eyes as Ron stared at him. He was freely crying with tears streaking down his freckled cheeks. A drop landed on Ron's nose. It didn't irritate him.  
  
He tried to muster the muscle control to say that he was sorry, but whatever they'd given him had robbed him of all capacity to speak. Charlie shushed him and stroked his forehead, shaking his own head. He brushed off the attempts of the medical staff to assess whether he'd been injured.  
  
He was still sitting protectively by Ron's side when Ron closed his eyes for what turned out to be the last time before he plummeted into sleep, with the room spinning around him.  
  
***  
Whatever they had given him had been enough to keep him under for a whole day. Even then, Ron had woken just long enough for a drink and some chocolate and then fallen fast asleep again. Only with thirty-six hours of rest under his belt had he been able to sit up unaided and eat a whole meal.  
  
He was utterly ashamed of what he had done to Charlie. Even though Charlie had been in and assured him that it was fine, Ron couldn't let go of his self-directed anger and guilt. He was sitting by the window, staring out at the people on the street below them, trying not to think about it.  
  
There was a knock on the door and he grunted his assent, but didn't turn to look at his visitor.  
  
“So, I hear it's a good thing that your brother loves you,” his Mind Healer called to him, shutting the door behind her and walking over to the window. “I jest, obviously. But how do you feel about what happened?”  
  
She pulled a chair over and sat down in it, crossing her long, graceful legs. Ron studied the high-heeled shoes she wore. It was black and impossibly shiny – he knew there was a word for the finish but couldn't recall it. It frustrated him.  
  
“Now, Ron, these are nice shoes but I don't think you're necessarily one to be commenting on fashion, am I right?” The question was lightly put.  
“No. Not really.” He finally looked up at her. She looked at him with neither sympathy nor pity. Ron felt slightly better for seeing her. “I keep finding that my attention wanders and then it fixes on something.”  
“It'll do that. It's all part of your mind processing the shock of what happened to you.”  
“Right.” He cleared his throat but offered nothing further.  
  
“How do you feel about what happened?”  
“I hate myself,” Ron whispered miserably. “I can't believe I punched my own brother.”  
“I can,” the Healer said, leaning forward. “Charlie said that he hugged you without your consent. You have spent two months being raped and abused, so no wonder that a man making an action against your will upset you. Even if you weren't aware of your reaction.”  
“It was only one month,” Ron said. His voice sounded loud and odd, completely disjointed. “One month. When I offered myself to him... everything after that was... I consented.”  
“You consented under pressure and in a life or death situation.” The Healer frowned. “That's not complete, willing consent, Ron.”  
“But I wanted to do it, sometimes.”  
  
“You wanted to have sex and comfort, or you wanted to be with Rodolphus?”  
  
The question made his throat dry. Somewhere in the two months, that line had been well and truly blurred.  
  
“There is no shame in searching for comfort in the darkness, Ron. We've discussed this before. You grew attached to Severus because he cared for you in your cell. And then when you were out of it, no matter that sometimes he acted irrationally and brutally towards you, Rodolphus Lestrange became your caregiver. No matter how strained and subjective, your bond with him was one of comfort.”  
“That makes me evil,” Ron whispered, feeling his face growing hotter by the second.  
“No it doesn't.”  
“Yes it does.”  
“And this is why you need to be somewhere that you can be helped, Ron. Helped to recover and make sense of the things that have happened to you.”  
“I want to go home,” he replied automatically, even though it wasn't the truth.  
  
The Healer sighed and leant back in her chair, watching him. “You don't mean that.”  
“I don't,” he confessed, shaking his head. He sniffed and blinked. “But I do want to see Severus.”  
“Well, I came to talk to you about that. We've asked Severus if he will consent to seeing you, to try and help both of you with your recovery.”  
“And?” Ron sat up straight, the back of his neck tingling with anticipation.  
“He has given his permission, but on the proviso that you meet alone. There are clearly things he wishes to say to you without anyone listening.”  
“Probably to call me a cunt,” Ron muttered miserably.  
  
“We'll see,” the Healer said. “He might. And then, of course, it's completely your prerogative whether you stay and continue the conversation or leave. Nobody's making you see him, though I know you want to. But you should be prepared for the fact that when you do see him, you might have another unexpected reaction, or you might radically change your mind. And it's okay to do so.”  
  
Ron nodded but he wasn't really listening to her. His mind was already racing with things that he needed to say to Severus but they all seemed trite and useless.  
  
“When can I see him?”  
“Well, I will need to inform him and his Healer, but I'd imagine this evening would be fine.”  
“That's good.” Ron would have said yes to meeting the man at three in the morning on a mountain at that point.  
“Try to prepare yourself as best you can,” the Healer advised and stood up. “I'll go to his Healer now and let them know.”  
  
Ron turned back to the window. The colours seemed brighter beyond it.  
  
***  
  
Mutual territory. That seemed to be the name of the game. Ron followed the MediWizard through the corridors without comment, only stopping to zip up the front of his hooded jumper. He was getting sick of being so cold all the time. The wizard stopped suddenly and Ron nearly walked into him. He knocked on a door and someone called from within.  
  
Heart in his mouth, Ron stepped over the threshold. Severus was sitting on one side of a table, wrapped in a thick dressing gown. He was pale and his eyes were seemingly unseeing, fixed on a point directly opposite him. Ron looked at the two members of staff; one waved him into the other seat and then then joined the other on the threshold.  
  
“Talk for as long as you like. We'll be just outside.”  
  
The door closed. Ron sat down. Severus stared over his head at the wall.  
  
“Hi,” Ron croaked nervously. He tucked his hands under his thighs.  
  
He waited for a response but none came. He looked over the wizard whom he'd last seen after supposedly murdering. He had put on weight since then thanks to the hospital, Ron supposed. His hair was clean and sitting way past his shoulders. It had grown so quickly.  
  
“Are you going to talk to me?” Ron asked, when it seemed like minutes must have gone past with nothing between them. “I just want to... see you. See how you are.”  
  
A sound came out of Severus' throat then; it sounded like disdain.  
  
“Stupid question, I know,” Ron went on quickly. “You're in hospital.”  
  
His eyes lingered over the stump of Severus' forefinger, the one he had been forced to maim during the early part of their captivity. His stomach turned. The Healers has repaired the skin so it was painless, but they had chosen not to re-grow the bone. Perhaps Severus hadn't allowed it.  
  
“Severus.” Ron sat up straight and tried to catch the man's eye. “Severus.”  
  
He repeated the name over and over, until his voice was high with distress and the word sounded disjointed and peculiar in his mind. Pulse racing he finally stood up to block the man's view of the wall, so that Severus would _have_ to look at him.  
  
Severus looked down at his lap instead.  
  
“Why did you even say you'd meet me if you wanted to do this?” Ron cried angrily. “I don't want to hurt you, Severus. I've done enough of that. I wanted to tell you I was sorry, for everything, that I couldn't tell you my plan... that I... I let you fall for me to make it seem all the more real to them. I never wanted to hurt you, betray you like that but I didn't see any other way... you have to believe me.”  
  
Ron froze as dark, empty eyes flicked up to his face and stared at him. He became even colder. Severus continued to glare at him. His knees began to knock. This was not how their reunion was meant to play out.  
  
“P-please,” he stammered finally. “Don't do this.”  
“I am doing nothing,” Severus said. The words were so quiet and clipped that Ron had to force himself to concentrate to make sense of them. “I am doing nothing, because you are nothing to me. You will receive nothing from me nor do I wish to take anything from you. I wish to put this whole sorry experience behind me and if you have any sense, Weasley, you will do the same.”  
  
Severus rose, causing the chair to scrape over the floor.  
  
“I agreed to this meeting to tell you that to your face. I am not so cowardly as to have someone else pass the message on. I wish you well.”  
  
He was gone before Ron could get his mouth in gear to respond. The door shut behind Severus' departing body. Ron seized the chair in front of him and, with a rough, prolonged scream which surely tore skin from the back of his throat, smashed it into the wall.


	11. Chapter Eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Content / Warnings: Story warnings: Dark!fic, EWE, Canon compliant to the end of DH but Snape didn't die, Resurgent fic; Chapter warnings: angst; mentioned kidnapping, torture, abuse, non-consensual sex; trauma, hospital setting, mental illness, aggression.  
> Word Count for this chapter: ~3,766  
> Summary: Every day is a test of their strength, willpower, and the desire to save their own skins >> In the darkness, one has to search for a light

  
**Six Months Later**  
  
Severus had never noticed just how much he used his little fingers in his every day life until one of them had been lopped off. With a frustrated growl he dropped his toothbrush in the sink and spat viciously on it. He made a fist which felt so very unnatural and wrong without the said finger that he wished he could throw the whole hand away and start again.  
  
 _You're good at cutting your nose off to spite your face._  
  
Looking at himself in the mirror, Severus wasn't surprised by the expression of deep distaste he wore. He loathed everything about his life at that moment and he loathed himself, too.  
  
Six months had passed since his release from the hospital, and seven since he had been set free from captivity. With each passing month nothing seemed to ease – the tension in his chest was still eating away at his lungs, his appetite was gone and sleep, sleep was so disturbed that most nights he didn't even bother to shut his eyes. He'd rejected all forms of medicinal help. The drugs made him woozy and hurt his head; in his view they were not worth the brief reprieve they gave.  
  
It had been a long hard slog. Suddenly there was no nothing, nobody to talk to, nobody to cajole him into doing anything. He begrudgingly visited his Psychiatric Healer at St Mungo's once a week, where they mainly sat in silence and sporadically commented on the weather. There was no Hogwarts, no routine to the day; his life was no longer governed by bustling meals and insolent teenagers.  
  
Severus would never admit aloud that he desperately missed the normality.  
  
He would also never admit to anybody that he was failing to cope with his new-found freedom, and knew that even if he hadn't been captured, abused and half-killed he still would have had issues with the next stage in his life. He had never expected to live beyond the age of thirty-eight. Somehow it had just seemed so resolute that he would not be able to guide Potter to safety and live to tell the tale.  
  
And when he had lived to tell it, he'd never dreamt of what else was in store for him.  
  
Severus turned the tap on and let the water carry away his spit and globs of toothpaste. He allowed it to fascinate him for a time, before huffing, turning off the tap and heading out onto the landing.  
  
His parents' old house seemed to be growing duller and danker by the day. The mould climbed higher with each passing hour. Despite the grime on the windows and the drabness of the wallpaper, Severus couldn't find any energy to care about it. The house, just like him, was in a sad state of affairs and it would stay that way.  
  
It wasn't an issue of money. For the first time in his life, money he had. His teaching salary had been generous, of course, but Voldemort had not just wanted his loyalty. He'd needed funds and, like the rest of the Death Eaters, Severus had been left with no choice but to pay up. On his release from the hospital, he'd been presented with both reparation money for his 'service' during the war and had been automatically issued a pension from Hogwarts, one which took into account his diabolical year as Headmaster and therefore yielded a higher than usual pay out. Severus had barely spent even a hundred galleons of it. His house was well-stocked with candles, teabags and biscuits. The Prophet was delivered daily and when he was done with them he burnt them on the fire. Those were his only expenses.  
  
Those, and whisky. He had developed a taste which his Healer chastised him for. Severus didn't give a damn what the man thought. He felt hehad lived a life of austerity thus far and had no inclination to go wild, but whisky - whisky he would buy. Good, single malt Scottish highland whisky.  
  
Someone had minimised the press regarding his release from hospital. Every day he suspiciously checked the road outside for journalists, but none came. He was happy with that.  
  
Severus would have been hard pushed to have named the last time he had left Spinner's End to go anywhere but directly to his Healer's office at the hospital. He barely even used the garden.  
  
He had become a recluse, and both he and the world seemed contented to let that become his natural state. He had no friends to speak of, certainly no family – he found himself without anyone to knock on the door or request entry by Floo.  
  
Dressing quickly in clothes which were baggy but comfortable, Severus headed down to the lower half of his miserable house and into the kitchen. He put the kettle on to boil there and looked out of the back window to the overgrown garden.  
  
 _Mum would have the screaming abdabs if she could see the house like this._  
  
Severus rolled his eyes at himself. In his solitude, he found his thoughts turning more and more to his parents and couldn't bear it. He'd hoped that he'd sealed off the memories, the feelings and the reality of his childhood a long time ago, but his mind seemed determined to dredge it all up again, as it had done in the cell. That had led to difficult memories of being a student at Hogwarts – of antagonism, bullying and, of course, Lily.  
  
From Lily he always spiralled into the barren wasteland of his emotional and physical relationships since leaving school. Thereon, he stumbled dangerously close to something he refused to think about, something which, if he had his way, he would refuse to even believe had ever happened to him. Yet, as his Healer always reminded him, it had, and there was a sickness in his belly which rose every time he thought of his companion in captivity, and the things they had shared.  
  
Even just thinking the very name of the boy made his fingers shake. It had not been easy to walk away from the redhead in that little meeting room, to be so hard towards him. It had made him sick to his soul but he had forced himself to do it. It seemed so clear to him that if he wanted any chance at recovery, he needed to walk away from Ron and everything that reminded him of their period of incarceration.  
  
He looked angrily down at his hand and the physical proof that, try as he might, could not be ignored.  
  
***  
Jerking out of sleep, Severus acknowledged the thump of his book landing on the floor. He must have drifted off whilst reading, and even though he was suddenly freezing and his neck ached, he had come to accept that he must take undisturbed rest whenever and however it came. He blinked into the darkness trying to find his bearings. It was black beyond the curtains and the fire had died down.  
  
He was just considering rolling off the sofa straight onto the floor when the cause of his awakening became clear – the doorbell. It sounded weak and feeble with disuse. Severus readied himself to ignore it when the bell jingled more urgently and was accompanied by several hard knocks.  
  
Nobody had bothered to come knocking before and this person, whoever it was, seemed to urgently want him, or the help which came from an open door. Making sure he had his wand, Severus walked stiffly into the hallway. His body had suffered greatly during his months in the cell. He felt like an old man in both body and mind. There were no clues to his mystery visitor through the glass in the door, for the darkness at his end of the street was absolute. He started to fumble with the locks, thinking only at the last minute to light the candles behind him.  
  
Considering only the big glass of whisky he wanted and finding some warmth, Severus opened the door to the Manchester night. He found himself biting his tongue to keep from swearing.  
  
“Severus.” Molly Weasley stood on the doorstep looking a great deal thinner than Severus remembered her. She wore finer clothes than he could ever recall seeing, but her face was wan and pale. Her eyes carried traces of exhaustion which could only come from experiencing a truly harrowing year. “I'm sorry to disturb you. May I come in?”  
“I'm not... I don't have many visitors.” His voice croaked as he spoke. He had skipped his most recent meeting with the healer so it had been at least two weeks since he'd spoken to anybody. “I make no apologies about the state of my hovel.”  
  
Molly nodded and passed him when he allowed her to. Severus closed the door, took a deep breath, and magically lit the candles in the living room. He gestured her in and then set about relighting the fire. He saw Molly's eyes dart about his dusty, book-lined living room.  
  
“Sit.” He waved at the less grubby of the sofas. He sat down in his usual place. Once upon a time he would have awkwardly offered tea, or wine, but those days of stunted social gaiety were gone. “How can I help you?”  
  
He'd thought he was being polite, but on the delivery of this question Molly promptly burst into tears and buried her face in her hands. Severus' heart began to drum a tattoo on his ribcage. He had never been particularly skilled with tears. It had surprised him that he had ever found the comfort within him to look after Ron.  
  
 _Don't. Not know. Not with her here._  
  
“I'm s-sorry,” she stammered finally, wiping her face futilely on her hands. “I'm sorry. I didn't come here to do that.” She took several deep sniffs, wiped her eyes once more, and straightened her spine.  
“What did you come here to do, then?” Severus asked bluntly.  
“To ask you a favour.”  
  
Severus' immediate gut reaction was anger. Bitter comments hurled around his mind like snowflakes in a flurry. He settled for drawing his mouth into a tight line and saying nothing.  
  
“Before I start... Just know that I understand your stance on him, and I understand why you walked away. Self-preservation. I don't blame you for it, Severus.”  
  
She took several more breaths and seemed to be steeling herself.  
  
“But... this is our last chance to... and I really think that...”  
“Molly.” Severus leant back in his chair and shook his head. “Spit it out, for God's sake.”  
“I came here to ask you if you would consider visiting Ron.” Each word was loaded, as if at any moment she expected him to explode and throw her out into the street.  
  
Severus acknowledged that she was right to be wary.  
  
“After your last meeting, things very quickly got out of hand,” she went on, nervously wringing her hands. “And now... they're saying that if there's no improvement by the end of the month, they're going to properly detain him, keep him in hospital against his will. They don't think he'll ever get better.”  
“What?” Severus couldn't help the strain in his voice. “What do you mean?”  
“He's lost it,” Molly said simply. She shook her head. “My little boy, there's barely anything of him left.”  
  
Severus stared at her. He needed more information.  
  
“When you walked away from him, he became violent. He simply lost control of everything he'd been fighting to keep in, and it didn't stop coming. He physically assaulted anybody who came near him, including... Including me.”  
  
Severus tried to contain the rising horror in his gut. That was not the Ron Weasley he knew.  
  
“And they moved him to a secure psychiatric facility, Benjy the Befuddled's... out in the country. They said it would help. But it's only getting worse and now... he's eighteen and he's a shell of himself.”  
  
Her eyes filled with tears again and he watched her struggle to retain composure. He didn't trust himself to speak. He had purposefully not sought out information on how Ron was doing. He had convinced himself that he didn't want to know.  
  
But learning that the boy had fallen apart was agony.  
  
 _And it was your fault._  
  
“My boys have wanted to come here month after month and ask what I am asking you now,” Molly said. “Each time I stopped them. You deserve peace, and quiet, and a solitary life if that is truly what you desire, even if I don't believe it is. But I'm here now, Severus, as a mother, and I will _beg_ you if that's what it takes.”  
  
Silence fell between them, broken only by frequent sniffs from the older witch.  
  
“What's wrong with him?” His voice croaked again. It began to irritate him.  
“He just snapped.” Molly gave a helpless shrug. “He has to be restrained to be washed. He won't let anybody touch him willingly. He sits in silence hour, after hour, after hour until it all seems to be too much and then he can literally cry for days. Then it dries up and he goes back to silence. He doesn't engage with the other patients or members of staff and... they're starting to give up on him. They said that they think he had a psychotic episode and it's left him borderline mute, volatile and... irretrievable.” Tears got the better of her then and she said nothing more as she tugged a handkerchief out of her sleeve and sobbed into it.  
  
Severus didn't know why he was surprised to hear that Ron had fallen apart. The boy had been abused, mind-fucked and forced to do terrible things against his will. Severus himself was no ray of sunshine after the same. And yet he had remained stable and Ron had crashed and burned.  
  
 _Because of you._  
  
“I don't think I can do what you ask,” he said finally, picking at a non-existent speck of fluff on his robes.  
“You're our last hope.” Molly's voice rose with increasing desperation. “You're the last thing, the missing piece of the puzzle. We've tried everything else, they even tried showing him Lestrange's dead body to try and bring him out of it. But nothing is working, Severus. The harshest, strongest medications have barely touched him. Screaming at him, begging for him to snap out of it produces no reaction. And I wouldn't be here, Severus, if Merlin knew there was any other way but there isn't!”  
  
“And what if it fails?” Severus met her eye. “What if I walk in there, which will take a great deal of personal pain on my behalf, and he stays mad, out of his mind, and I have to walk away again?”  
  
Molly got to her feet, the handkerchief balled tight in her fist. “You owe him your life.”  
“A life I never thought I'd have, and didn't really want.”  
“Then why didn't you sacrifice yourself to save him, if you cared so little about your own life?”  
“After all these years, Molly, I've rather had enough of saving people.” He got to his feet, feeling belittled despite her short stature.  
  
She surprised him then. She laughed – a cold, horrible laugh which he never imagined she could make. She shook her head again.  
  
“No, Severus.” She laughed through falling tears. “That sort of commitment and bravery doesn't leave a soul. It doesn't suddenly decide it's had enough. You _want_ to drag yourself out of this miserable pit and come to Benjy's and try to get through to Ron, but your own damned self-pity is going to put up a fight.”  
  
Severus dragged himself up to his full height. “I am _not_ self-pitying.”  
  
Molly laughed at him again and he felt anger stirring in his veins.  
  
“I think you should leave,” he advised her, crossing his arms over his chest.  
  
They glared at one another. It went on so long that Severus began to wonder how he was going to remove her from his house without brute force. Eventually, however, Molly's expression fell and was replaced with sadness. Severus leant back as she came towards him, but all she did was reach up and press her palm – warm from clenching and damp with tears – to his cheek.  
  
“Even if there are only the dregs of a sensitive, caring man within you Severus... please, please consider using them to try and save my son. I beg you.”  
  
In a flash she was gone. Severus heard the front door close quietly behind her. He fell backwards onto the sofa and buried his face in his hands. The stump of his little finger throbbed.  
  
***  
  
“This way, please.” The MediWizard gave him a tight smile and gestured through a door he had unlocked.  
  
Severus walked, his neck creeping and his stomach churning. The door was sealed behind them with magic. They walked down a corridor and then had to pass through another secured door. His escort noticed his discomfort.  
  
“Unfortunately it's for their own safety, and for the rest of the patients in less volatile states.”  
“Is this whole place under lockdown?” Severus asked, as the man stopped to open yet another door on what seemed to be the longest corridor in the world.  
“Only this wing. This is where we house our most severe and disturbed cases.”  
  
They came to a set of double doors. The MediWizard pressed his hand to the wood and a green glow spread outwards from his skin. One door opened of its own accord and Severus followed him through. He was surprised by what he found. He stood in a large communal room, filled with sofas and books. A chess board sat on a table propped against one wall and there were other selected items. The room was peaceful and empty.  
  
Severus had expected to enter into a ward of screams, terror and madness.  
  
“Have you told him?” he asked.  
“No. We thought it best not in case...”  
“In case I changed my mind.”  
“That, and it might have caused days of agitation. This way... we'll know if he's going to react badly to you and whether it's worth trying again.”  
“Again?” Severus repeated dumbly.  
  
The wizard sighed. “Mr Snape, did you really think that you would be able to commit to seeing him once and then walk away again? Because if you did, I think you should leave now.”  
  
Stupidly, Severus realised that _was_ how he thought things had be. He'd been so convinced that his presence would do nothing to the lost redhead that he'd not considered what would happen should his visit produce benefits, no matter how big or small.  
  
“No,” Severus said, his eyes latching onto an abandoned cup of water on a side table. “No. I'll see him.”  
“I'll stay with you, so you don't need to fear physical violence.”  
“No.”  
“I'm sorry?” The man's brow furrowed.  
“No, I see him alone or I don't see him at all.”  
“But your safety-”  
“ _Fuck_ my 'safety',” Severus muttered. “I don't care about that but I do care about the potentially highly private things which might be said. I don't want you party to those.”  
“You do realise that, over the course of our treatment of Ron, we have discovered everything that went on whilst you were taken?”  
  
Severus went cold.  
  
“But nobody is pressing any charges, nobody is blaming you for anything.”  
“That's not true. You're all blaming me for walking away and making him fall apart.”  
“I don't buy that. I think Ron would have eventually broken regardless of whether you were there or not. And like it or not, you had your reasons for walking away. So you might have softened the blow for him... you might not. But you have had to heal yourself, and that isn't a crime.”  
  
Embarrassed, Severus looked away.  
  
“Ready?”  
  
He nodded and was led out of the living room to a wide, cream-coloured corridor. His guide stopped only at the very end and pressed his hand to another door. He then knocked.  
  
“Ron? It's only me. You have a visitor. Are you decent?”  
  
There was no answer from within and Severus was offered the chance to open the door.  
  
“I'll be right here if you need me,” the wizard murmured, and stood back to lean against the opposite wall.  
  
Severus didn't lift his eyes as he opened the door and slipped inside what turned out to be a surprisingly big hospital room. There were splashes of colour in the magnolia, no doubt put there by the Weasley family. Some flowers stood in a plastic jug on the windowsill. Ron was sitting on the bed.  
  
The state of him made Severus want to run. He looked every bit as mad as they presumed him to be. His hair had grown long and wild, presumably because he refused to allow anybody near him to touch it. It was tangled in places. His skin was deathly pale and there were purple shadows beneath bloodshot eyes.  
  
 _And my god, he's so thin._  
  
Sapphire blue eyes, which even at times in their confinement had sparkled, stared at him without emotion. Severus suddenly found himself feeling inept – he had no idea of what he should do. Should he be close or far, cold or warm, emotional or distant? He felt a fool for not asking before he entered the boy's only sanctuary. Or his prison – Severus couldn't decide which was more apt.  
  
In the end the silence drove him closer to Ron, so close that he sat down on the end of the bed. His mouth was dry and his tongue seemed stuck in place, unable to form words.  
  
Even if it had been able to, Severus was sure he wouldn't have known what to say.  
  
Inexplicably he became unable to bear the distance between them, and all at once, needed to know if Ron would accept him.  
  
He reached out and placed his hand over one of Ron's, finding it cold to the touch. He held on.  
  
Ron blinked many times but said nothing. A small amount of colour appeared in his cheeks and his eyes grew glassy. Severus held on tight, and did not move away.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Content / Warnings: Story warnings: Dark!fic, EWE, Canon compliant to the end of DH but Snape didn't die, Resurgent fic; Chapter warnings: angst; mentioned kidnapping, torture, abuse, non-consensual sex; trauma, hospital setting, mental illness.  
> Word Count for this chapter: ~4,318  
> Summary: Every day is a test of their strength, willpower, and the desire to save their own skins >> Severus has never been very skilled at coming to terms with the truth.

_It was so very cold, lying there waiting to die. His limbs twitched uncontrollably. He had resurfaced after Potter had left for an extra dose of agony. He felt like a ragdoll, slumped limply on the floor of the Shrieking Shack. The stench of dust and stale air mingled in his nose with the tang of his own blood.  
  
 _ **Severus.**_ Someone whispered his name in an almost otherworldly voice. It whispered again and again until it began to frustrate him, but he had no strength left to lift his head and look for the speaker.  
  
How long was he to lie there, waiting to pass? It seemed an extraordinarily cruel type of torture for someone who had worked so hard and so tirelessly. Surely a quick death was deserved?  
  
 _ **Severus.**_  
  
Fresh dizziness swamped his brain and his breath faltered. He hoped his time had finally come.  
  
 _ **Not this time, my sweet.**_  
  
A cool caress brushed softly at his brow. His eyes flew open: he had not realised they had closed._  
  
Severus blinked dumbly in the candlelight. He was not on the floor of the Shrieking Shack. He presumed that meant he wasn't dying, either. A flash of irritation shot through him. He blinked again and tried to bring the room into focus around him. When it eventually came, he recognised the insipid paleness of the walls in Ron's hospital room. He straightened in his chair and couldn't help a groan at the stiffness in his lower back. It unfurled from his coccyx and crept upwards. He eased to standing and reached back to rub at it.  
  
Only then did he notice wide sapphire eyes staring at him from the bed. Ron wasn't yet beneath the covers. He was sitting cross-legged on top of them, staring at Severus.  
  
“Was that you speaking to me?” Severus asked, his voice gravelly and deep with slumber. He yawned into his hand. His watch said it was five to eleven. “Merlin, why didn't you wake me? You'll want to get to bed.”  
  
Ron gave an obstinate shake of his head and shrugged. Severus looked at him and couldn't help but sigh. It had been three weeks since his first visit and Ron still hadn't uttered a word, to Severus, to his family or to his healers. However, there had been such improvements in other areas that everyone seemed willing to let his muteness slide for the time being.  
  
It unnerved the hell out of Severus. He remembered the days in the cell, where Ron would infuriate him with mindless chatter – seemingly, the boy never shut up, and now the reality was very much different. He had become more animated in his facial expressions, however, and had even made a sound which was something like a laugh at one point. He was eating more, he'd allowed someone to brush his hair but had refused to have it cut. It could have been tied back it was that long.  
  
Severus would never have said aloud that he thought it suited the boy. He poured himself a cup of water from the plastic jug at the end of Ron's bed and gulped at it.  
  
The last he could remember, it had been eight o'clock and the MediWitch had come round with the evening medication tray. Visitors were normally expected to leave at six but Severus had a special dispensation. They so desperately encouraged the positive effects that he was having on their patient, they sometimes looked like they didn't want to let him leave at all. No hour was too late.  
  
And although the place was a magnolia painted hell and had a slightly strange yet not unpleasant smell to it, Severus actually didn't mind being there. It wasn't the riot of madness he'd expected, far from it. Despite the fact that Ron was situated on the most severe ward in the building, there was a surprising peace that radiated through the corridors. He wondered if the rest of the hospital was as serene and knew that soon he would find out. Even though he wouldn't speak, Ron hadn't posed a physical threat to anybody since Severus' first visit. Overnight the agitation had stopped. There was a planned move to an intermediate treatment ward in the upcoming weeks. Severus wondered if his long visits would soon be shortened.  
  
Ron leant back against his pillows and stretched his legs out in front of him. His eyes stayed on Severus.  
  
“Well, it's late.” Severus smoothed down his robes. “I should get going and let you go to bed. You must be shattered.” Experience had told him that Ron's medications would make him start to droop two hours after ingestion. They were an hour beyond that now.  
  
Severus had become a master at reading Ron's facial expressions. The boy wouldn't talk, so it was all they had to communicate. Severus had tried to encourage Ron to write, but that seemed as hard as talking for the redhead.  
  
At that moment in time Ron looked sad. Suddenly, he wouldn't meet Severus' eye and it didn't take a genius to work out what was silently being said.  
  
“You know I can't stay with you here.”  
  
 _Won't._  
  
“It's against the rules, not to mention inappropriate. And... what went before between us was under very different circumstances.” Severus didn't know if he was doing the right thing or not, bringing up the intimacy which they'd shared whilst being held captive. It was his own fear which made him do it, regardless of what it would do to Ron's state of mind. He was terrified of having the finger pointed at him – of having his actions questioned. Whilst everyone was very sympathetic about what had happened to the pair of them, Severus deeply doubted that this would extend should he and Ron rekindle any form of physical closeness. Especially whilst Ron was still in hospital.  
  
There was a frustrated thump and Severus looked up, having been lost in his thoughts. Ron was banging his fist into the mattress, carelessly and without rhythm. His eyes had changed – his mind was far away, if Severus was reading him correctly.  
  
Perhaps refusing had been the wrong thing to do. He walked to the side of the bed and sat down. He captured Ron's fist in mid-air and took it in both of his hands. He smoothed a thumb over the freckled skin. He immediately felt Ron relax again.  
  
It was strange to Severus to have such power. He was a man who had inspired great hatred and anger for all of his life. Yet there he sat, calming an eighteen-year-old with only his touch.  
  
 _You're kidding yourself. That physical closeness has never gone away, and it never bloody will._  
  
“I'm still feeling terrible,” Severus explained finally. “My back is killing me, as is my throat. I need to sleep in my own bed, not a plastic chair.” He threw a filthy look at the offending article. “Do you understand?”  
  
Ron rolled his eyes and pouted in his boyish way, but eventually nodded.  
  
“And... about tomorrow...” Severus cleared his throat and looked down at their joined hands. “I can't come tomorrow. I'm very sorry.”  
  
He didn't dare glance up. He had been dreading imparting that particular news all evening. Severus started with surprise when Ron's free hand touched to his face. On looking, Severus found a face full of sadness but with resignation, too. Severus had been to visit Ron every day since that first day, giving up the hours in which he would normally have spent sitting alone in his house, being miserable. It was what Molly and the Healers wanted. It was what Ron wanted.  
  
Severus found it easy to give what was wanted.  
  
“I've got a couple of appointments at St Mungo's. To check my progress. Afterwards I will be of no use to you, so I won't come, and I'll see you on Saturday?”  
  
Ron nodded and straightened up.  
  
“You'll go to bed?” Severus asked pointedly. Ron nodded and then yawned, earnestly and shiveringly. “Well. Then it's goodbye for now?”  
  
He extricated his hands and got to his feet. He picked up his cloak and folded it over his arm.  
  
“Goodnight, Ron.”  
  
He hesitated on the threshold, as he did every night, desperate to hear a farewell in reply. Nothing came. He nodded to Ron and ducked out into the corridor.  
  
***  
  
Severus knew it was late, and that he should be at home fast asleep, but something had grown within him since parting with Ron and he knew he wouldn't have drifted off if he'd tried. Instead he sat in a dark corner of The Leaky Cauldron, nursing a glass of Firewhiskey. He drowned his sorrows with each mouthful, but they rose again within him, bobbing around in his chest and making him feel sick. With each passing visit, he grew more afraid of Ron's clear and obviously intensifying dependency on him. He couldn't envisage a day where Ron would ever leave Benjy The Befuddled's without having spent most of his recovery with Severus, and the promise of more after discharge.  
  
That idea was the hardest to bear of all. Severus found himself revisiting their miserable days in the cell, playing games of chess with rocks and marking the grid out in blood. And then when the captivity had become too hard to bear without it, they had taken physical comfort within one another until they'd been parted.  
  
There were days when he was so blinded by his anger towards the redhead that he had to force himself to apparate to the mental health hospital in the countryside. He had to keep his temper on a tight lead until the moment had passed. He wanted to shake the boy with his fury, for leaving him, for tricking him, for nearly killing him all over again.  
  
Severus couldn't deny that Ron had been ridiculously courageous in the face of things. He had been told that Rodolphus Lestrange had used the boy for sex and treated it as a semi-relationship, but had been brutal at times. Ron had killed him in the end and come back.  
  
 _Brave._  
  
 _Fool._  
  
“Severus?”  
  
He looked up to find an older Weasley boy standing there, his eyes bright with drink.  
  
“You're out late?” Charlie frowned. “What's up?”  
  
Severus couldn't refuse as the redhead clumsily lurched into the chair opposite him. The redhead immediately picked up a beer mat and began playing with it.  
  
“I've not long left the hospital,” Severus said, hoping that this would do all of his explaining for him, and took a sip of his drink.  
“Gets later and later.” Charlie shook his head. “I can't tell you how fucking grateful we are, Severus... he's just so much better.”  
  
Charlie's face held unconcealed wonderment. He smiled at Severus eventually and continued playing with the cardboard square in his fingers.  
  
“I wish he'd talk,” Severus blurted awkwardly. _Must be the drink._ “I find it so unnerving to see him so quiet... he wasn't like that when...” he trailed off, embarrassed.  
“Ron was only ever quiet when he was in a proper sulk,” Charlie reminisced. “So it's hard for us to see him this way too.”  
  
Severus nodded and took an over-large gulp. His throat burned when he swallowed.  
  
Charlie's voice was softer when he spoke next. “What's bothering you, Severus? Tell me. Can I help?”  
“I'm just...” His words failed him and he looked down at his lap. “I'm concerned that he's too attached. That... there will be no easy way to part from him.”  
“Do you want that?” Charlie asked carefully, keeping his eyes on the now dog-eared beer mat.  
“Want what?” Severus frowned.  
“Do you want to, uh, 'part', as you put it? Have you had enough?”  
“No. Not at all. I just fear for the future. He won't spend his life in that place. He'll get better and leave and then...”  
  
He met Charlie's eye at last, hoping that his expression adequately conveyed his concerns.  
  
“Look.” Charlie shifted in his seat. “We know most of what happened when you were gone. And I agree with you, Ron's spent the last nine months, in one way or another, attached to you. And that's not going to go away. But it doesn't have to.”  
“I hardly think it appropriate that it continue-”  
“Why not?” Charlie's eyebrows rose. “He's of age. You're of age.”  
“We could never...” Severus mentally shook himself for even allowing the thought into his mind. “That would be a severe breach of-”  
“Would it?” Charlie shrugged and shook his head. “Look, Severus. I know that this isn't where you saw yourself after the war. Godric knows it's not where Ron saw himself, either. But this is where you _are_ , and I think you have to make the best of that situation.”  
“He's eighteen,” Severus muttered.  
“And you're thirty-eight. I'm twenty-six. They're just numbers, Severus. You've both been through hell together. That's a bond which stays put. And he saved your life because he cared about you. Remember that.”  
  
Severus knocked back the last of his drink so that he didn't have to answer.  
  
“Is this gentleman bothering you, sir?” the words were drunk and playful. Severus looked up and found a brunet he vaguely remembered from Hogwarts poking Charlie in the shoulder. “Would you like me to escort him from the premises?”  
“Twat.” Charlie grinned and got to his feet. “Severus. Just think about what I said. Night night.”  
  
They walked away, collected their coats and headed out into Diagon Alley through the back door.  
  
Severus stared at his empty glass and sighed.  
  
***  
“How many times do I have to tell you that you shouldn't drink alcohol?” The Healer stared at him, unimpressed.  
  
Severus didn't have the energy to be ashamed. He met the wizard's eye and refused to commit to an answer. In the end, the Healer sighed and leant back in his chair.  
  
“You need to allow your body time to heal, Severus. If you don't... well, you know the costs. We've already spoken about them.”  
  
That, at least, made him awkwardly fidget in his chair. He folded his hands in his lap. “I know. But the problem is that the drink helps my mind.”  
“No, you use the drink to patch up the holes you don't want to think about.”  
“I thought the robes of a mind Healer were a fetching periwinkle blue, not burgundy.” Severus stared pointedly over the desk between them.  
  
The man laughed and sipped from his coffee mug. He fiddled with some parchment on his desk before continuing. “Severus. I don't mean to speak out of turn, but...”  
“You're going to anyway.”  
“Quite. There's no easy way to say it – but unless you start giving yourself some consideration, start caring about yourself... you're not going to survive. Your health will deteriorate to the point where you can't cope any more.”  
“This is not new information,” Severus muttered.  
“You've given up on yourself. I look at you and I don't see a man who has escaped from the jaws of death twice and is determined to live the new lives he has been gifted.”  
“Well that would be because I'm not.”  
“And that's not right. You have so much to live for.”  
  
Severus couldn't hold back the bitter laugh which rolled off his tongue. “I have so much to live for? Tell me, exactly, where this rich and colourful life is hiding? I have no family, no romantic attachment, no children, no friends. What, exactly, is there to live for?”  
  
Anger spread through him, quickening his pulse and making his hungover head throb. He clenched his fingers into a fist to hide the fact they were shaking. The Healer didn't immediately respond to his outburst, but sat watching him with a pitiful expression which made Severus want to scream.  
  
“I have nothing,” Severus finished caustically. “Do not tell me what you know is a lie.”  
“You're thirty-eight, Severus, and yet you seem to think your life is over.”  
“As you've pointed out, it nearly has been – twice.”  
“But it's _not_. You've survived. You're a strong man with a roof over his head-”  
“A mouldy, miserable roof laden with even more miserable memories-” he protested.  
“And a decent amount of money. You can build yourself a new life. Money doesn't buy happiness but it certainly helps. Move out of your family home, buy another. Make it your own. Surround yourself with things that make you happy – books, potions, good wine in moderation and better food. Warm fires, a comfortable bed. Someone to share it with.”  
  
Severus snorted derisively. “And who on _earth_ would want to share my bed?”  
“More people than you let yourself believe.”  
“If you're talking about the Weasley boy, then I'm going to leave this office right now.”  
“I'm not. Not specifically. But he'd be in line, I'm sure.”  
“He's also eighteen, and if you hadn't noticed, nearly catatonic at the moment.”  
“He won't always be on either count. I hear your visits have supported a remarkable improvement.”  
  
He didn't understand why his cheeks started to burn, but Severus looked away and said nothing.  
  
“It just seems to me that you have been through not one but two points in life where you should have died. And you've spent the last six months playing the hermit in your house, refusing to see anybody but your Healers. But you aren't healing. Why? Because you don't, pardon my French, give a shit about yourself. And you will _not_ get better, Severus, until you start to do so and reward yourself with the comforts in life that you deserve. You are punishing yourself by staying in that house, which by your own account is 'festering and falling down' around your ears. Stop it. Stop bloody wallowing and take control of your life. Take what you deserve.”  
  
The more the Healer had spoken, the more impassioned his words had become. Severus found himself quite stunned. Not since he'd murdered Albus had he been on the end of such a talking to. He loathed it, he positively detested being read the riot act as had just happened. He opened his mouth to give the wizard an acid-tongued response, but found there were no words waiting to come out.  
  
Suddenly he felt very ill, very weary and very ashamed of himself.  
  
He reached up and smoothed his hands over his face. The Healer said nothing. They sat in silence for a long time, the only sounds coming from the ticking clock on the wall and the sounds of the hospital carrying on beyond the office door. Severus peeled his face from his fingers and sat up properly.  
  
“And this is your qualified medical opinion, is it?” he asked finally.  
“Of course.” The Healer wore a small, furtive smile. “Completely professional. Apart from the swearing, naturally.”  
“Obviously.”  
  
Suddenly they were laughing together and Severus felt a tingling lightness in his shoulders which he had seldom experienced before.  
  
“At least think on what I've said,” the Healer requested after he had composed himself.  
“I will,” Severus promised, surprised by the earnest nature of his tone. “I... you are right.”  
“I know I am. Are we done here?”  
“My medications?”  
  
The Healer plucked a quill from an ink pot and jotted some medicines down on a piece of parchment. “Get these from the Pharmacy on the ground floor.”  
“I'd prefer to-”  
“Just do it.” The man sighed exasperatedly.  
  
Severus accepted the parchment in his hand and nodded. There was nothing wrong with the hospital apothecary, he was just being obtuse.  
  
“Until next week,” the Healer said.  
  
Severus left quickly, with the paper crunched in his fist.  
  
***  
  
He knew he'd said that he wouldn't go. But it had only taken an hour of sitting in his quiet lounge, his copy of the Prophet done and dusted with the room smelling of mould before he had given in and Floo'd to Benjy's. The warmth of the hospital seemed to welcome him as he strode through the corridors, bidding good evening to the staff who he had come to recognise. He waited for admittance to Ron's ward. The witch that let him in took in his appearance like one would a desired present.  
  
“He's got someone with him at the moment. You're welcome to wait in the communal area?”  
“Might I ask who?”  
“Hermione Granger. She visits sometimes, either with Mr Potter or by herself. They try and come every other day. They don't want him to think that they've forgotten him.”  
  
Something inside Severus' chest hurt at hearing that.  
  
He settled himself on one of the sofas closest to the fire and opened a copy of a Quidditch journal which had been left there by a previous occupant. He read nothing as he flicked through the pages, looking only at the glossy photographs and grinning players.  
  
“Severus?” Granger's voice was tentative and shook slightly.  
  
He closed the magazine and reached forward to place it on the coffee table.  
  
“Miss Granger.” He gestured to her to sit down.  
“I didn't think you were coming, else I would have come out ages ago.”  
  
Severus noticed, then, that her eyes were wet. It had to be difficult to see the man who had so briefly been her boyfriend in the state he was. She hastily wiped her eyes on a tissue and swallowed.  
  
“Is everything...” He didn't finish. Nothing was okay. He wasn't in the habit of asking stupid questions.”  
“Yes... I just... I find it so hard to see him like that. That he won't talk to anybody. I've tried to read about it all but I just don't understand.”  
“Ron probably doesn't either,” he said gently, cringing with awkwardness.  
“And...”  
  
Severus waited for her to go on. She seemed to be struggling to get the words out, but it was clear she wanted to continue.  
  
“And it's like we never... like all those years of tension and feelings... it's like they've just been wiped out of his mind. He doesn't want me.”  
  
At that she completely lost control and buried her face in her hands. Severus looked around for a member of staff and found none.  
  
“What Ron does and doesn't want isn't known,” he said finally. “He might even be incapable of wanting.”  
“He's b-bloody not,” she stammered. “He very obviously wants you.”  
“Me.”  
  
She looked at him then, her tears sparkling in the firelight. It struck Severus then how pretty she was. He had never looked at her so closely before.  
  
“When we were... during our captivity... they tried to unnerve Ron by throwing him a chunk of hair just like your own. He nearly lost his mind with worry.”  
“But that was before...”  
  
Severus shuddered at what she was implying.  
  
“They also told him that all of his family was dead. He has been through so many emotional kicks in the gut, is it really a surprise that he might not be showing affection and desire at this point?”  
“But he is!” She burst out, bordering on hysterical. “He wants _you!_.” The look on her face let Severus know exactly what she thought of that.  
“I can't speak for him and I certainly don't know what he does or doesn't want,” Severus said firmly. “But you are only upsetting yourself. Who knows, when he comes out of this, he may choose to act as if nothing ever happened. That there was no captivity, no abuse. He may want exactly what he had before he was taken – a future with you.”  
“Or he might want what he was forced to have. You.”  
  
Severus hesitated. There had been no element of force to their solitary couplings in the cell. Ron had instigated those quite willingly.  
  
 _But under extreme circumstances. You were the last person he would have wanted to cuddle up to otherwise._  
  
“See?” Hermione sniffed. “Even you know it.”  
  
She got to her feet and wiped at her eyes with her fingers.  
  
“Just... promise me something,” she said, her eyes suddenly wide and serious. “Don't hurt him. Just... please. Give him what he wants, if that's you. Don't make him hurt any more. I want him to be h-happy.”  
  
She turned away and, sobbing, fled the ward. Severus was left reeling on the sofa.  
  
Somewhere on the ward, a clock chimed eight times. It spurred him to his feet and down the corridor. It smelt different to usual as though there had been something spicy for dinner. He inhaled and tried to clear his mind before he knocked on Ron's door.  
  
He entered straight away because Ron wouldn't verbally answer. Ron looked up, halfway into his pyjama top. It fell to the floor as he crossed the small hospital room in two strides and wrapped his arms around Severus with the door still open.  
  
Faced with the boy's naked torso, Severus froze. Ron was warm, firm and clearly eager to share physical contact. Severus managed to push the door to and, because he felt compelled to, returned the hug. He breathed in the smell of freshly washed hair and nearly shuddered.  
  
The smell was so familiar and so comforting. He found himself staggered to realise just how much he had missed that scent. Ron pulled back. He was smiling.  
  
Severus found he couldn't return it. Instead, he pulled the redhead back towards him, and embraced him again.


	13. Chapter Thirteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Content / Warnings: Story warnings: Dark!fic, EWE, Canon compliant to the end of DH but Snape didn't die, Resurgent fic; Chapter warnings: angst; mentioned kidnapping, torture, abuse, trauma, hospital setting, mental illness, sexual contact between characters with an age disparity.
> 
> Summary: Every day is a test of their strength, willpower, and the desire to save their own skins >> All at once, Severus seems to let it happen.

Severus paused with his hand on the door handle. A strange blue light was flickering between the wood and the linoleum of the hospital corridor. He stared at it for a moment, trying to determine what it was. His mind came up trumps so he opened the door instead of further contemplation.  
  
Ron was sat cross legged on the bed, his palms cupped in his lap. Within them sat a rough ball of flickering, shimmering blue. Captivated, Severus dropped his coat onto a chair and perched on the end of the bed. Ron seemed entirely entranced by his magic and, given that Severus knew the boy hadn't used a single ounce of magical power since his admission, he didn't want to disturb him.  
  
That didn't quash his curiosity about the conjured fire, however. He had made plenty of magical fires himself in his time, he had seen others make portable fires which could even be carried in the unprotected hands of humans. He'd never seen one of such colour before, however. Unable to help himself, he reached out and tried to touch the flames. They dipped away from his flesh and no matter how hard he tried to make contact, the fire evaded him. Frustrated, he attempted to press his entire palm to the fire which vanished immediately. Severus' hand fell into Ron's open ones. When he glanced up, Ron was smiling.  
  
“Have you ever made fire like that before?” Severus asked, trying not to enjoy the warmth of their shared touch too much.  
  
Ron shook his head. He leant back and reached for a picture on his bedside table. He presented it to Severus, tapping at Hermione in the picture.  
  
“Hermione taught you how to do it?”  
  
Ron shook his head again and shrugged.  
  
“You watched her?”  
  
Ron nodded.  
  
“Impressive.” Severus took the photograph from him and set it back where it belonged. He leaned over and pulled a bag from under his coat. He handed it to Ron and switched to sitting in his usual chair.  
  
Beyond the windows there was a foul February evening pounding the scenery. He looked through the blurred glass whilst Ron went through the paper bag. Severus heard the rustling of metallic sheeting and couldn't help his smile. He waited to hear if there would perhaps be an appreciative moan but Ron, as ever, remained silent through his chewing.  
  
When he eventually looked back, Ron was slumped against the pillows and headboard of his hospital bed, his eyes closed, chewing slowly on the chocolate which Severus had travelled specifically to Hogsmeade to buy. Ron hadn't asked him to do so. Severus found himself doing more and more for the redhead without so much as a word. Chocolate. Quidditch magazines. The odd takeaway smuggled in under the noses of the MediWitches.  
  
Suddenly he seemed to have turned into an absurd mother hen, happy to spoil Ron with anything he could possibly want. Whereas before he had been borderline miserly, he had a new attitude towards his wealth and possessions. Perhaps, he wondered, his healer's lecture had finally broken through a barrier that neither Albus Dumbledore nor his own misery could touch. Perhaps he was finally healing.  
  
He'd even reached the point where he had started searching for a new property. With each passing day he loathed his parents' house more and more, feeling that it was suffocating him with the dankness and terrible memories. The mould was doing his chest no good at all. A few nights he'd elected to stay in a local B&B closer to the hospital. They had asked him to join in with some of Ron's therapy sessions and it had shocked him to his core when he'd agreed.  
  
Severus Snape did not 'do' therapy. He did not 'do' expressing his feelings for others to hear.  
  
And yet he had sat there with Ron and the psychiatrists and actually spoken about his feelings for both Ron and about their time in captivity for the very first time. It had been easier than he'd ever imagined – almost too easy; he'd had to stop himself from revealing far too much from his youth. Ron didn't need to know any of that. The sessions had been cathartic. He'd agreed to keep on working with them.  
  
A loud rumble of thunder broke overhead and Severus looked to Ron. Sometimes loud noises frightened him. Severus had witnessed a metal jug falling from the dinner trolley and Ron jumping right out of his skin before bursting into tears like a scared child. But Ron was not scared now. If anything, he looked more alive than Severus had seen for a good while. He continued to watch as Ron unfolded from the bed, his eyes bright and colour pinking his cheeks. He went to the window and touched his fingers to the glass, staring out to the storm beyond. He stood there, statuesque, until Severus reached out for his free hand and laced their fingers together. Ron looked down at their fingers and then up to Severus' face. He jerked his head to the window and raised his eyebrows.  
  
“You want to go out in that?” Severus asked.  
  
Ron nodded with more enthusiasm than Severus had seen since the boy became mute.  
  
A stronger flash of lightning lit up the room and the thunder cracked a few seconds later. Severus didn't know whether he should indulge this particular want. He had taken Ron out in the hospital grounds a few times, with the redhead always bundled up like a polar explorer and only ever for periods of ten minutes or so.  
  
“Why don't we just...” He got to his feet and dropped Ron's hand. He put his hands to sash window and pushed it all the way up.  
  
The windows were charmed to not respond to the touch of the patients or those not granted special status at the front reception desk. Severus knew he was not supposed to open the window to a point where Ron could climb out and abscond or injure himself. But they were alone, Ron wanted to watch the storm, and Severus was confident he could deal with any difficulties which arose.  
  
Using his wand, he transfigured the chair (long since turned into a padded, comfortable armchair from the previous plastic monstrosity) and made it big enough for two. He nudged it towards the window with his knee and gestured to it. Ron looked longingly out of the window before grudgingly accepting the sofa as a second best. Severus extinguished the candles in the room and returned to sitting. Ron was immediately there, demanding physical contact. More lightning bleached their view white and the thunder grew stronger. Severus allowed Ron to settle, accepting the weight of Ron's head on his shoulder and the arm which crept across his belly and curled about his waist.  
  
Severus allowed himself to indulge a little in Ron's scent. It was marred with the undeniable stench of of a medical setting, but Severus had smelt far worse on him – blood, sweat, tears of distress and other bodily fluids. The freshness which can only come with a storm began to filter through the window with the breeze. Ron shivered beside him. He was wearing his usual hospital clothes – an old t-shirt and soft non-tapered jogging bottoms. His feet and arms were bare. Severus summoned the top blanket off the bed and draped it over his companion.  
  
The storm outside was gathering momentum. A particularly hard burst of rain drenched the fields beyond the hospital garden and Ron leant forward, leaning his elbows on the windowsill. Severus said nothing, looking at the slowly regrowing form beneath Ron's clothes. His presence meant that Ron was content to take food again and was starting to put on some of the weight he had lost during captivity and his time in hospital. His hair was still longer than Severus had ever known it, but everyone had given up commenting.  
  
It was so beguiling to watch the redhead learn forward and eagerly lift his face to the raging storm. Bits of tree had started to fly past the window. The rain poured down and the temperature dipped to what must have been freezing or lower. When he looked closer he saw that the rain was actually sleet, icy cold and tipping to earth with such force that the atmosphere became blurred with it. Ron watched it all attentively. More lightning flashed and more thunder crashed. Severus lost himself in his view and the sounds of the storm.  
  
***  
  
The next thing that Severus knew was the fog of surprise slumber. He opened his eyes to find the room still dark and the window still open, but he was lying on the enlarged sofa under the blanket from Ron's bed, and Ron was curled next to him. The room was freezing. Though the sleet still fell, the thunder and lightning had passed on. Both the hospital and grounds were quiet.  
  
He didn't need to look at his watch to know that it was long past his home time. One of the nurses would have checked on Ron at least once an hour through the night. He cringed with shame. He reached out to the window, hoping that his magic would be accepted as well as his touch. He held his breath until it had safely closed and the immediate flow of chilly air ceased. Then he looked down at Ron, still peacefully asleep next to him. To wake him would have been cruel. Severus knew he didn't always sleep as easily.  
  
So instead he stayed where he was, feeling increasing embarrassment with each further waking minute. Ron shifted closer to him and Severus took a moment to revel in the warmth.  
  
 _From a bloody eighteen year old, you pervert._  
  
Ron was in fact nearly nineteen, his birthday approaching fast. Severus watched his sleeping face. One more year wouldn't be enough to assuage the shame and guilt which twisted his stomach whenever he actually thought about what could happen beyond Ron's hospital admission.  
  
Perhaps sensing the tension, Ron chose that moment to cuddle closer, and raised his face. Severus didn't feel that he could pull away as their lips met, a clumsy jumble of heat and spit which wasn't wholly unpleasant.  
  
 _Just inappropriate._  
  
Even as he thought it, Severus questioned it. He most certainly felt guilt about his intimacy with Ron but, to some extent, it had been as inevitable as Ron's with Lestrange. They had served as ports in the storm for one another and Ron was still in that storm. Severus stood by his reservations about what would happen if the boy ever came out of it.  
  
The thought of being cast aside like an unwanted gift made him nauseous. He'd been through enough in his life. He didn't need that sort of emotional turmoil again. There was a very great possibility that his heart and mind couldn't take it. The Healers had warned him.  
  
 _But nobody would need to know about that or the consequences should this all go wrong._  
  
At the very heart of it, he supposed, was the fact that he wanted to want Ron. He wanted a warm body to cuddle at night, to make love to – to love in general. And be loved In return.  
  
He jumped slightly as he realised that Ron was awake and watching him, his shadowed face looking impossibly young and innocent.  
  
“You should have woken me,” Severus whispered, bringing one hand up to rest on Ron's cheek. He played with his hair. Ron gazed at him.  
  
It happened quickly. Ron kissed him again, deeply and searingly, his hands framing Severus' thin face and holding it in place. Severus moaned and let it happen, giving himself over to the pleasure for the briefest of moments and Ron seized the moment. Despite his frail-looking frame, he had the strength to manipulate Severus onto his back and straddle him. The blanket fell to the floor but Ron didn't seem bothered by the cold. As the redhead kissed him, Severus felt the grinding of powerful hips into his body.  
  
Heat flushed up his neck and suddenly it was very hard to breathe.  
  
“Ron, no – we shouldn't-”  
  
His words were swallowed by Ron in a fresh kiss and Severus only just managed to stop himself from crying out as his wrists were captured and pressed into the seat cushion on either side of his head. He gasped instead, a breathy, whorish pant which he was sure the whole hospital could hear, along with the thundering of his pulse. A sharp nip to his bottom lip made him tense. Ron had never done that to him before and so surely it had been a move taught to him by Lestrange? His stomach contracted.  
  
“Don't be afraid.”  
  
It took Severus a good few moments to process what he had heard. When his brain realised he froze and gawked up at Ron with his mouth open. But the redhead had moved on. He was reaching down between them, fingers fumbling with something and, as skin met skin, Severus realised just what he was searching for.  
  
It had been nearly seven months since anybody had touched him like that. He was a human being, after all. He reacted only as any other man would have, having been so lonely and desperate. He arched into Ron's touch and groaned his delight into the redhead's neck. Ron's fingers were tight and delicious on his cock and he seemed to know exactly what he should do, moving up and down in slow but firm movements. Sometimes he paused to manipulate the head and at these moments, he bent down and took Severus' mouth again. His hands still pinned on either side of his head, there was little that he could do but kiss back and arch into Ron's apparently talented hands.  
  
He moaned at unexpected pain in his shoulder as Ron threw himself backwards but did not relinquish the wrists he held. They were pressed level with Severus' hips and it was the opportune moment to beg for Ron to stop.  
  
But he didn't.  
  
Ron sucked him in and licked like he was possessed. It was rough and slightly toothy, and Severus would never have known that he liked it until it happened. Ron's breath huffed over his skin and tickled in places. He glanced down and saw Ron's cheeks hollow as he began to properly suck. The sensation was heaven and he let his head tip back, forgetting all about prudence and when the staff might check on Ron next. All he wanted for Ron to keep going, to push him to the edge and send him flying over. It had been a long time since he'd allowed someone to get as close.  
  
“Oh god...” He moaned, letting his teeth chew into his bottom lip to prevent anyone hearing beyond the room.  
  
But as Ron continued Severus found himself unable to keep his praise and delight inside. He moaned Ron's name and told him he was beautiful. He told him he sucked like a whore. He, in short, said many things he knew he would regret by the time the sun had risen.  
  
Ron drank in the compliments like a sponge, speeding up and strengthening the movements of his jaw. Severus was powerless to prevent what Ron seemed desperately to want – his completion and complete devastation right into Ron's waiting mouth.  
  
He didn't have to wait long. Dizzy, panting and completely exhausted, Severus turned his mouth into his shoulder to try and muffle the long, rough moan as he came. In their cell Ron had pulled away at that point but there, in the middle of a mental health hospital, he stayed put and audibly gulped the proof of his labours away. Severus shuddered to hear it. He didn't know whether he liked it or not. Ron eventually broke off and sat up, gasping at the air as though he'd been without for minutes. His face was flushed so much that it was visible in the weak light filtering through the window. He sagged where he sat, leaning into the back of the chair and closing his eyes.  
  
***  
  
The storm of the weekend was replaced with a continual mizzling grey rain. It was impossible to do anything in it without it causing everything to stick – hair, clothes, random passing leaves. The continual grey was doing well in fraying both the edges of souls and tempers alike. Severus, however, had been buoyant throughout.  
  
He had not shared what had happened between him and Ron on Sunday morning with a soul. Even if there had been anyone to tell, he wouldn't have breached the boy's confidence like that. He half imagined that he had dreamed the whole affair, but he had rather lewd and specific memories, the likes of which his memory was too tired to create alone.  
  
But the whole event had lifted him like nothing he could ever recall. It was easy to bat away the guilt when it was replaced by such a warm feeling in his chest. Ron had spoken to him. It had only been a whisper, and though not once in the following reciprocation did Ron speak again, it didn't matter to Severus. He had laid Ron on his back and meticulously and sensually worked him into orgasm. He could still see the look of bliss on Ron's face as he'd finally come.  
  
Something unspeakable and inexplicable had changed between them. Severus hadn't yet seen Ron since but he knew something had changed within himself, and that was half the battle.  
  
He would be heading to the Benjy The Befuddled's after his meeting. He had to confess that he couldn't wait, and wished he hadn't scheduled a meeting with a property adviser south of the river in London. He was half tempted not to bother turning up, but he refused to allow a complete personality change to lay claim to him.  
  
 _Yes, allowing sexual contact between yourself and an eighteen-year-old is quite enough to be going on with._ He scowled into his coffee and tried to put the voice out of his mind.  
  
***  
“He's just finishing up in a session, but you're welcome to wait in his room,” a MediWizard said, gesturing down the corridor to Ron's room.  
  
Severus thanked him and headed to the end of the hallway. The door had been left open by the cleaning team and he felt a spike of happiness that the enlarged armchair, now a sofa, had been kept and pushed against the wall by the window. Ron's room was tidy for a change, with the bed neatly made and all clothes within the tiny wardrobe. Severus wasn't surprised that Ron was messy. He had been too at eighteen, after all.  
  
He shrugged out of his coat and tried to wring some of the damp out of his hair. In the end he gave up and sat down with his copy of the Prophet. He leafed through the pages without really looking until he saw a familiar scene.  
  
Ron. Standing at a window. Wearing an old t-shirt and a vacant expression.  
  
“Shit!” Severus hissed, unable to make his eyes slow down so that he could read the text.  
  
 _'I can exclusively confirm, dear readers, that the tallest and most freckled of the Golden Trio has been found at last. Rumours had spread following the kidnap of Weasley and the now-revered Severus Snape (see my piece in Witch Weekly this week for more details on **his** whereabouts, ladies!) that perhaps Weasley had not returned from captivity. Well, now we know that he has, but has his very own room within Benjy the Befuddled's! As you can see from our exclusive photograph, Mr Weasley is looking rather gaunt and unwell and, given the specialism of the hospital, one must wonder if he is quite safe to be amongst the public. This writer feels for now he is best kept behind the walls of our country's most skilled and comprehensive psychiatric inpatient unit. The silence of Potter and Granger is now explained – why would they want to admit that their best friend has gone crackers? Let's hope for everybody's sake they keep Ronald Weasley locked up until he has proven that he is safe to be let out.'_  
  
“You vile, scum-sucking hag!” Severus hissed at the paper and slammed it shut with venom.  
  
He looked up guiltily as Ron entered the room, followed by one of his healers.  
  
“Ah, so you've read the paper then,” the Healer asked grimly, nodding to it.  
  
Severus could only give a terse nod. He didn't trust himself to speak at that moment. Ron was staring down at his feet.  
  
“Ron and I have discussed it this morning.”  
“You mean-” Severus hopefully half-rose from the chair.  
“I mean that I talked, Ron listened and made indications that he did or didn't agree, and that he understood. I think he'll be glad that you're here.”  
  
Ron didn't move when the Healer clapped him on the shoulder and departed.  
  
“Ignore it,” Severus said immediately, chucking the paper in the bin as he got to his feet. “She's just desperate for attention.”  
  
He walked to Ron and tried to catch his eye. Ron remained silent.  
  
“If I ever get my hands on that woman...”  
  
He placed his hands on Ron's shoulders.  
  
“Anyway... how are you? After the weekend?” He smiled, hoping to dissipate the somewhat icy atmosphere.  
  
Ron shrugged and turned away.  
  
“Aren't you going to say anything?” Severus asked incredulously.  
  
The look which Ron sent him withered him where he stood. Severus saw the anger in his eyes and the set of his mouth and was slammed with the utter disappointment that, perhaps, he _had_ imagined Ron's reassuring whisper during that night. Maybe he'd heard it because it had been what he wanted to hear.  
  
His mouth was suddenly parched dry and he coughed. The room seemed to be closing in on him.  
  
“I've... I've just got to step out for a moment,” he murmured, and hurried from the room, down the corridor and eventually out of the hospital altogether.  
  
He no longer noticed the rain as he strode down the long hospital driveway to the apparition point.

 


	14. Chapter Fourteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Every day is a test of their strength, willpower, and the desire to save their own skins >> And just like that, everything changes.
> 
> Content / Warnings: Story warnings: Dark!fic, EWE, Canon compliant to the end of DH but Snape didn't die, Resurgent fic; Chapter warnings: angst; mentioned kidnapping, torture, abuse, trauma; hospital setting, mental illness, attempted murder, death.

_“Press my nose up, to the glass around your heart_  
I should've known I was weaker from the start,  
You'll build your walls and I will play my bloody part  
To tear, tear them down,  
Well I'm gonna tear, tear them down...” **['Babel'](http://youtu.be/iWza_On7ajs) ~ Mumford & Sons.**

  
  
“Well, what d'you think?” The agent was wearing a big, smug smile, which told Severus that how he felt was written all over his face.  
  
Not wanting to let the agent win, he gave a small cough and turned his head away. “I suppose it's suitable.” He glanced out of the corner of his eye to see his indifference land; the agent did not disappoint.  
  
“This is an excellent buy,” the wizard went on, his incredulity lifting his tone. He continued to reel off the features of the house, both Muggle and Magical, which made it worth the money. Severus had heard it all before and he didn't need reminding.  
  
He had found the house where he would make his future. He had known that fact from the second he'd stepped over the threshold and paused to breathe the house in. In the past he had scoffed at those who said they just 'knew' that which they were meant to have, but it had happened to him, and he couldn't very well claim it as bollocks when he could sense it in his very gut.  
  
“It won't be around forever,” the agent needled. “We've shown many interested parties around.”  
“If that were true, neither of us would be standing here. One of those parties would be living in it.” Severus chose that moment to stare at the man. He wore flashy robes and too much gold jewellery. Severus didn't trust him one iota.  
  
As it was, the wizard blushed slightly and started blustering about the view to the beach, the sea and how there was a fantastic room for getting sandy shoes and swimwear off before heading into the main part of the house.  
  
Severus didn't suppose he'd ever have swimming trunks to discard on the floor and leave until the mouldy smell forced him to act.  
  
 _But **he** might._  
  
He chewed the inside of his cheek and tried to marshal his thoughts. He'd been desperately trying not to think about Ron since the scene in the boy's hospital room. It had been so awkward and, Severus was annoyed to realise, painful. He didn't think he had ever been a person to be buoyed by such minuscule glimmers of hope, but the truth was he felt like he'd been punched in the stomach. The ache was constant and responded to nothing. It had spread to his chest and he feared it would show in his physical tests the next time he visited his healer.  
  
“So...” the agent rubbed his pudgy, ring-clad hands together expectantly. “Shall we talk numbers?”  
  
Severus turned away from him and drifted to the window. The view really was excellent.  
  
“I will talk, you will listen,” he said stonily after some time, but did not turn away from the sea.  
  
***  
With ink still drying on the papers for the house, Severus stood in the living room of his parents' house, wondering if he should just torch the lot of it. The books he cared for – the memories, he wanted shot of.  
  
And yet something stopped him when he pointed his wand with intent. There was something deep within which prevented him from kissing goodbye to his miserable childhood, his miserable parents and their especially miserable house.  
  
Sighing, he reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose. The excitement of the day had caused a headache and he was bone-tired for reasons he couldn't explain. But he had said he would go to the hospital that evening and so sleep would have to wait. He had made a pact with himself, however, that he _would_ be spending the night in his own bed and not on the sofa in Ron's room.  
  
He was trying to cool the whole situation down. He'd dared to hope and Ron had ruined it. He supposed he was petty, holding it against a mentally ill young man for not maintaining a brief moment of strength.  
  
Severus was still sure, however, that Ron really had whispered to him. That those few words, so softly put, had been for him and him alone.  
  
That caused a hot sensation in his innards that he didn't want to give too much consideration to.  
  
His mother's old grandfather clock began to chime the hour and he stilled, unsure of the time. Six. He'd agreed to visit at seven and chat to the MediWitches about Ron's upcoming move to the medium-intensity wing. He'd been assured that his involvement was still desired.  
  
In his more bitter moments, Severus considered telling them that he no longer wanted to be involved.  
  
“Ridiculous,” he muttered to himself under his breath, and it was.  
  
Ron seemed to have a hold on him so strong that Severus had only ever experienced such compulsion once before in his life. Lily had been different and under very different circumstances, but he had been drawn to her as he was to Ron, and in his mind the bond was already settled and aged. In the months he'd been visiting the hospital, he'd swung from complete denial to actively seeking intimacy between the two of them, no matter how badly he felt about certain things.  
  
 _You would not return to the hospital day after day if you were not committed to him._  
  
Severus had very little experience of being committed to somebody who actually wanted him in return. Unrequited love – well, he had the t-shirt and could publish books on the subject. He knew where he stood with unrequited love – the pain, the agony, the fantasies, the brief moments between waking and sleeping when he forgot everything and it seemed that all might be okay. With Ron it was different. He had very little clue on how to proceed and that unnerved him.  
  
 _Bloody terrifies you._  
  
Coughing to drown out the sound of the voice in his head, Severus gripped his wand and looked around for something to get rid of.  
  
***  
The hospital was quiet as Severus headed through the corridor warren to the high-intensity wing. Nobody paid him attention as he walked except for a small smile from one of the cleaners that walked past with a trolley. Somewhere a group of people laughed.  
  
Though he loathed St Mungo's, he had come to a sort of truce with Benjy the Befuddled's as the weeks passed. It wasn't a bad place to be and it didn't really smell of a hospital. It was a warm, gentle building for the most part and the staff were caring people who were good at their jobs.  
  
He knew he might feel differently if he were the patient, however.  
  
Eventually the sight of the double doors leading to Ron's ward came into view and Severus was glad. Every part of his body was aching. The small painkilling draught he'd knocked back before leaving had done absolutely nothing; if anything, he felt worse.  
  
It was going to be a very short visit. He rang the doorbell for the ward and waited. Seconds ticked by and he peered through the door glass. He rang again. A glance at the clock on the MediWitches' station wall told him that he had probably caught the staff at the change of shifts and they were probably in some kind of handover. Eventually he caught sight of blue robes heading his way and he stepped back.  
  
“Come in, come in,” the MediWitch trilled, a smile on her face. “How are you this evening? Is it still freezing out there?” She jerked her head to the window.  
“It's not too pleasant,” Severus said, pulling his scarf from his neck and folding it in his hands. “Getting colder by the hour.”  
“The sort of night where you want to be at home in front of the fire with a big glass of something,” the woman said wistfully, staring out of the window.  
  
“Persophene, do you need any help? Who is it?” Another voice called out and one of the MediWizards stepped out of the handover room.  
  
Severus felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up as the man took one look at him and yanked his wand out and pointed it at his chest.  
  
“Who the hell are you?” he spat, approaching cautiously, motioning with his hand that Persophene should get away. “Reveal yourself.”  
  
Confused, Severus held his hands up and backed away. “Severus Snape. Here to see Ron. As usual.”  
  
“Will, what's the _matter_ with you?” the witch cried, looking between them both.  
“Severus Snape is already visiting Ron. I was just about to say as much in the handover. So I repeat, who the hell are you?”  
  
Out of the corner of his eye, Severus saw his name scribbled in chalk on the blackboard which charted all the patients of the ward and their present visitors.  
  
“I'm-”  
  
Before he could get anything else out, the most terrible scream raced down the hallway to them. Alarms began to sound all through the ward, loud and piercing. Somewhere a red light started flashing, bathing everything in a bloody hue. Another scream broke through the hubbub of noise. Suddenly there were staff pouring out of the handover room and staff bursting through the main ward doors behind him.  
  
“Every patient on this wards gets a guard,” the wizard who had been pointing his wand bellowed. “Now! Everyone else, with me.”  
  
His own feet seemed to be glued to the floor. The stampede thundered away from him, all aiming for Ron's room at the end of the corridor. More terrible screaming came, but it was not only one voice, it was many. The distress of the other patients at the sudden racket and commotion became evident. He heard struggles in many of the rooms. A loud bang cracked through the ward and only then was he able to move. He was with them, one of the surging crowd as they tried to open the door which refused to budge. It had to have been magically sealed.  
  
“Together,” someone shouted.  
  
The combined force of at least twenty cast Alohamora spells would have been too much for even a steel door. As it was, Ron's blew clean off its hinges and splintered into the far corners of the room. Shards of wood flew everywhere and those at the front were forced to cover their eyes. Ron did not shield himself. Immediate gashes appeared on his cheeks and brow, blood surging to set off his wide, maddened eyes. His hands were outstretched and Severus saw a limp figure lying on the floor, his neck at an angle which defied the odds of biology.  
  
“Who is it?” someone asked and Severus found himself there first, bending down to roll the body over. The head lolled limply. Ron had broken the intruder's neck.  
  
Bile rose to his throat as he recognised the profile of the wizard – heavy eyebrows, a thin but prominent nose. Facial hair. Severus had looked into those eyes during torture and watched him play with Ron in every way possible.  
  
“This man was one of our gaolers,” he said, feeling faint. “He... I can remember...”  
  
The words died in his throat. Faced with part of the hell that they'd escaped, Severus became overcome with fear. There was a thump on the floor behind him; he didn't need to look to know that Ron had passed out. One of his hands hit Severus' leg on the way down. He turned and stooped, pulling Ron's body into his arms and hoisting him up onto the bed, where Severus held him close and refused to let go.  
  
***  
Molly was still screaming at the staff by the ward entrance. Her voice was so loud and so clear that Severus could hear every single word by Ron's bedside where he sat, draped in a blanket one of the MediWitches had insisted on wrapping around his shoulders, holding the boy's hand. Opposite sat the two eldest Weasley children, wearing furious expressions and tightly gripping their wands.  
  
 _A redheaded guard of honour._ The thought amused him. Someone had practically forced a calming draught down his throat when white sparks appeared in his vision. They'd taken his pulse and him to sit down, shut up and drink it. He had. It was very odd to be incensed in the mind but with an unwilling body. All he could muster the energy to do was to hold Ron's hand and listen to Molly's unfair accusations against the staff.  
  
 _”Are you all idiots?! My son could have DIED, again! Do you just let anybody walk in here off the street and believe they are who they say they are? Do you not have wards in place? That bloody photographer went undetected too! You're all incompetent!”_  
  
And on and on she went. Severus imagined the embarrassed look on Arthur Weasley's face as he stood by his apoplectic wife. He further dreamt up the look of shame on the faces of the staff as he stifled a yawn into shoulder.  
  
“You should go home and rest,” Charlie said gently. “Ron's out cold. You need to take care.”  
  
Big, amber-brown eyes, full of concern. Severus was so dopey from the medication that he felt like he could get lost in them and never be bored.  
  
He jerked abruptly when he realised he was tilting to one side. Ron's arm jerked as he pulled upright.  
  
“Ow. Fuck off,” Ron muttered, turning his face into the pillow and nuzzling his cheek against it.  
  
It took several moments for it to sink in, but when it did, Severus' mind was clear as a bell and he leant forward in his seat. Opposite him, Bill had gripped Charlie's arm convulsively and they both wore identical expressions - as though someone had doused them with iced water.  
  
Severus had to remind himself that this was the first time they had heard their brother utter a single word in months. They had not been party to the single whispered, breathy encouragement Ron had given to Severus.  
  
“Ron?” A tremor shook the word as Bill spoke. “Ron, can you hear me?”  
“I can hear you all right. Shut the fuck up. Why're you shouting?” The words were spoken with a hoarse and near-broken voice.  
  
A pained moan followed the words and, with what looked like great effort, Ron opened his eyes. When he realised he had a welcoming committee, his eyes widened and he tried to sit up. He made it only onto one elbow before tiredness overwhelmed him and he landed with a heavy thump on his pillows again.  
  
“Do you remember anything?” Severus croaked, knowing he should release the hand he held but not wanting to one bit.  
  
Ron groaned again and brought his free hand up to rub at his eyes. “Something happened...”  
“Understatement,” Charlie commented. Severus looked away when he saw that the young wizard's eyes were brimming with tears.  
  
“Somebody tried to attack you,” Severus went on, sniffing hard.  
“Where'm?” Ron mumbled. He looked dazed, like he was coming out of an impossibly long sleep.  
“In hospital,” Severus whispered. “Do you remember nothing?”  
“I remember... the cell. I remember... bits.”  
“It's okay.”  
  
Severus found the strength from somewhere to transfer to sitting on the edge of the bed, putting his hand to Ron's brow and finding it roasting hot.  
  
“Get someone,” he muttered out of the corner of his mouth to the two brothers that stood watching. “He's burning up.”  
  
Footsteps hinted at a departure and then seconds later an arrival. Molly Weasley engulfed her son in her arms, and Severus was pushed aside. He swayed where he stood. Someone gently took his arm and began to lead him away and he was too shattered to protest. The calming draught was making an idiot out of him.  
  
  
  
He had no way of knowing how much time passed as he sat on the sofa closest to the fireplace in the ward's communal area. Around him, people came and went – a mixture of patients, staff and members of the Auror force. He saw Harry bursting into the ward with Ginny on his heels, steaming down the corridor together with similar expressions like thunder. Hermione then arrived, her hair damp and alarmingly bushy, with a coat thrown hastily over her pyjamas.  
  
One of the nurses had brought him what she claimed was 'medicinal brandy' and refused his refusal. He gripped onto the glass so tightly that he was surprised he hadn't broken it. The fire grew low, someone added more logs so that it grew high and bright again. Severus still sat there, in silence, staring out of the window. It had started to rain somewhere in the hours which had passed.  
  
A raised voice suddenly caught his attention. “Get back in bed this second, Ron.”  
  
The response was too low for him to hear. Footsteps approached. He switched his gaze to his brandy.  
  
“I've been in bed for months!” Ron's voice was louder and churlish and it was his feet which marched up to Severus. On looking up, Ron's eyes were oddly bright and his cheeks were flushed. “Help me,” he pleaded. “Help me tell them that I'm okay.”  
“Are you?” Severus asked, raising his eyebrows. “Because I'm bloody not.”  
  
Ron looked at him, seemingly caught between annoyance and amusement.  
  
“Give me that,” the redhead demanded suddenly, holding out his hand for the glass of brandy.  
  
If he had been more awake, Severus might have refused, but as it was, he was still doped up and Ron was a sight to behold with determination etched in his expression. The brandy was gulped down and, gasping on the other side, Ron wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.  
  
“Fuck that's good.” His voice was hoarser still. His vocal chords had been dormant for too long. He sounded far older than his nearly nineteen years. “Now. C'mon. You have to help me make them see.”  
“See what?” Severus asked. His body felt like lead.  
“That I'm not pscyho any more.” Ron laughed at the notion and scrubbed his hands with his face. “I'm not. I'm me again. You believe me, right?”  
  
Struggling upright, Severus felt pain gnawing in his joints. Ron looked at him with an expectant smile.  
  
“What do you expect them to do?” Severus asked quietly. “Let you walk out of here immediately, saying you're cured? I don't know if anyone's explained it to you, but you've been very unwell for months and you've just killed a man by breaking his neck.”  
“I didn't know I was doing it!” Ron protested angrily.  
“Exactly!” Severus put his hands on Ron's upper arms and gripped them. “Ron, I know this is extremely difficult but try to calm down and see it from their point of view. Nobody is against you. All we want is for you to get better.”  
“I _am_ better.”  
“People don't just emerge from catatonia in one night!” Severus cried, beginning to fear the look flickering in Ron's eyes. “Please, Ron. Just...”  
“Just what?” Ron exhaled.  
“Just sit with me.” Severus fell back onto the sofa and pulled Ron with him. He tried to ignore the alarm bells ringing in his head to remind him just who would be watching them. They were inconsequential, and Ron was the only thing that mattered.  
  
He allowed not even a millimetre of excess space between them. Ron seemed to relax into his hold and rested his head on Severus' shoulder. The crazed look in his eyes disappeared in a few blinks. The wind seemed to trickle out of him the longer the embrace continued.  
  
“I'm fine,” Ron whispered half-heartedly, despite the fact that his eyes had become waterlogged and were beginning to drip tears down his cheeks. “Fuck.”  
  
The redhead winced as the salty liquid ran into the cuts the exploding door had caused to his face. Someone had healed them but the scars were vivid and some were only just knitted together. Severus reached up and wiped the physical evidence of Ron's frustration and sadness away. More tears fell but Ron didn't shy away. He held Severus' gaze. He had aged over the course of the night. There was sorrow written into the lines of his face and his eyes seemed sunken but brighter. Severus decided he was imagining this, as, like he had said to Ron, people did not change so absolutely and so quickly.  
  
Yet despite that, he himself felt years older than he had when he'd entered the hospital.  
  
“I'm sorry,” Ron whispered after some time, looking down at the space between them.  
“For what?” Severus frowned.  
“Everything.”


	15. Chapter Fifteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every day is a test of their strength, willpower, and the desire to save their own skins >> And just how hard Severus has been fighting becomes clear when there's no longer anything to fight for...

**Content / Warnings:** Story warnings: Dark!fic, EWE, Canon compliant to the end of DH but Snape didn't die, Resurgent fic; _Chapter warnings: angst; mentioned kidnapping, torture, abuse, non-con, trauma; hospital setting, mental illness._  
  
  
Severus was shattered. As strange as it had been to see Ron emerge from his mental prison, it had been stranger to suddenly have someone talking back to him, asking him questions, requesting that they do things together.  
  
He had grown too used to the boy's silence and Ron was anything but silent now.  
  
“What?” Ron demanded, startling Severus where he sat.  
  
He realised then that he'd been staring. Ron shifted his weight awkwardly from foot to foot.  
  
“Nothing. Just lost in thought.” Severus did his best to look awake and interested. “What were you saying?”  
  
Ron's body mass had increased since the incident two weeks before, but he was still thin. His hips were so slight that Severus wondered how they would feel on being grabbed and pulled; maybe even thrust against.  
  
Mentally he shook himself and sat up straight in his chair. The sudden onslaught of sexual thoughts about Ron disturbed him. When Ron had been mute and broken, there had only been that one night of intimate connection between them. With the redhead talking, eating and even laughing again, Severus' mind was running away with itself, thinking impossible thoughts. He refused to give them any purchase at all.  
  
Ron, however, had other ideas, and his desire to be close to Severus was proving difficult.  
  
“Nothing much,” Ron said finally, throwing himself down on the sofa next to where Severus sat.  
  
He immediately crowded close, worming his arm behind Severus' back and holding his waist.  
  
“I can't wait to get out of here,” he muttered resentfully.  
  
That, at least, Severus could understand. Ron had made quick progression through the hospital, leaving his original lodgings in the secure wing for a private room on a lower-intensity ward, then to a bed on a communal ward and then, much to his delight, to the trial one-man bungalows the hospital provided within the grounds. Healers visited three times a day and Ron still had to attend meals in the main building and his medications were delivered and supervised. But he had free time to spend as he wanted and was allowed to go on supervised visits to see his family, even though he hadn't quite made it yet.  
  
Severus understood his hesitation. It had been a solitary little world in his mind for many months, and the clamour and chatter of his family home was an intimidating prospect.  
  
That was why, as Severus was bitterly dreading, he had agreed to accompany Ron the next day to The Burrow for a Sunday lunch. It had taken real grit and an ache in his jaw to not run screaming at the idea. Though he had become increasingly acquainted with Ron's family over the course of his hospitalisation, Severus wasn't relishing the thought of having to sit through dinner and make pleasantries.  
  
He was finding it hard enough to do that with Ron alone in his little bungalow.  
  
“You've gone again.” Ron sighed. He looked down at his lap before opening his mouth again. Somehow, Severus just knew he wasn't going to like what Ron had to say. “Look. I get that they asked you to see me to try and bring me back. I know that you probably only did it because you felt some kind of debt... or at the very least, like it was worth a go. But if you don't want to be here now... then... don't be.” The words were awkward; it was very clear that Ron hadn't spoken for a long, long time and that his ability to form sentences had been butchered.  
  
Severus thought on what he'd said. Nobody had asked him to continue spending time with Ron after the break-in. Nobody had asked him to calm Ron down on that night, either, but he'd done it – sat there until every single limb was numb with his buttocks heading the same way. When Ron had finally fallen asleep, curled around him and all cried out, Severus still hadn't moved.  
  
And he'd repeatedly come back, in each ward of the hospital and now to the private little bungalow, which was filled with anti-ligature measures and only soft or plastic items. He had played countless games of chess. He'd acted as a mostly surly butler. He'd even attended a few furthered therapy sessions at just a look from Ron.  
  
A look which said, _'Please help me, I can't face this alone.'_  
  
The therapists had launched themselves on the poor boy with a vengeance. His days were mostly filled with testing subjects such as their incarceration, his repeated rape and emotional neglect and abuse. Those were the days when Ron retreated to the bungalow white-faced and dull-eyed, unable to do anything more than grunt and sleep.  
  
And those nights, and those looks, were the reason Severus remained. He could have washed his hands and walked away and he doubted any of the Weasley family would have attempted to hold him back. They were thrilled to have Ron back in the land of the functioning – the impossible had been achieved. Severus wondered what their thoughts on him were now that, as he saw it, he was superfluous.  
  
Despite that, he'd still been invited to dinner. Ron still wanted him to go.  
  
“Severus?” Ron looked at him nervously.  
“Yes?”  
“Say something.”  
“Oh.” Unusually, Severus felt his face flood with colour. He'd spent too long with the quiet Ron, the Ron who didn't want to talk and didn't have questions that needed answering. “Sorry. No... If I was ever here for some sort of debt, or as a favour to your family... that's not the case now.”  
  
Ron was staring intently at his jeans.  
  
Compelled to do something, but unsure of what was best, Severus reached out for Ron's free hand and laced their fingers together.  
  
“D'you remember...” Ron chewed into his lip, looking unsure of whether to continue or not.  
“Go on...” Severus encouraged him with as much of a smile as he could muster.  
“That night... with the rain? And we watched the storm together?”  
“ _You_ remember that?” Severus asked. Ron's memories had become jumbled in the fog. The last thing he seemed to remember clearly was Severus' own death ceremony and the immediate aftermath. “I didn't think...”  
“I remember it.” Ron smiled almost bashfully. “I remember how good it felt. And I remember... whispering something to you.”  
  
Severus couldn't help the way his jaw dropped. He'd convinced himself that he'd imagined the little murmur between them as they rutted against one another on the transfigured sofa in Ron's old high-security room.  
  
“And I remember how at peace you looked when you came.” Ron's voice croaked over the last word and Severus couldn't tear his eyes from the redhead's face. “How... relaxed you were. You were never like that in the cell. You were always so tightly strung and convinced you were doing something wrong.”  
“I'm still not convinced that I'm not,” Severus grumbled.  
  
Ron caught the words because he was so close and the next moment, they were kissing, softly and sweetly and oh-so-innocently. Severus reached up and cupped the base of Ron's skull in his hand. He could taste the remnants of mood-enhancing potions on Ron's tongue and felt breath racing over his face. Ron's cheeks had flushed, masking the freckles.  
  
He looked beautiful.  
  
 _And nineteen next week._  
  
It was Ron that called a halt to the kiss as abruptly as he had started it. He stayed close, pressing their foreheads together and making their noses clash. Severus held on. He didn't really know what else to do.  
  
“I know you'll say this is just because of everything that's happened,” Ron whispered suddenly, his eyes widening. “But even if it is... what does it matter? Because we've been so... so... fucked, by the whole thing.” He shook his head. “It's just what it is.”  
“What what is?” Severus frowned.  
“I love you,” Ron said.  
  
***  
  
“Mum, you just get better and better.”  
  
Severus agreed with that. Molly had provided him with plenty of food during Ron's hospitalisation, but to eat it freshly cooked and hot from the oven was another thing altogether. All around there were empty plates and satisfied faces, except for Ron. He seemed to be struggling with even half of the food his mother had served him.  
  
“Not to worry,” Molly said airily, stealing the plate away. “You'll be back to your old appetite again in no time.”  
  
An appetite which was apparently voracious, though Severus had never seen it so. In their cell Ron shared what they were given and even tried, on numerous occasions, to push more on Severus than he ate himself. He assumed that there'd been little appetite during the time he'd spent dangling from Rodolphus' arm.  
  
It was a period they did not talk about. The healers had advised against it and Severus for one didn't fancy revisiting the crushing loneliness and fear which had paralysed him in their time apart.  
  
“Severus...” He looked around for the speaker, unable just yet to tell the Weasleys apart by voice alone. Charlie winked at him. “A word?” He jerked his head at the door and started to rise to his feet.  
  
Glad of a break from the warm kitchen, Severus also rose, but as he followed the second eldest Weasley child he felt the youngest boy's eyes boring into him. When he allowed himself a glance at Ron, his stomach squirmed: he looked panicked.  
  
“I'll be back,” he assured him quietly.  
  
He closed the door behind him and sucked in lungfuls of the late-February air. Charlie was heading around the house and Severus followed, dismayed to find the burly man simply sitting on a bench sheltered by some trees.  
  
“Sit down. Nothing to see here.” Charlie shrugged. “But you were looking like a caged animal so I thought some fresh air would do you good.”  
  
Sighing with relief, Severus sat down next to him and looked at the Weasley garden – overgrown in places, full of bramble bushes and in the distance, full of bare apple trees, waiting to blossom again.  
  
“Thank you,” he said, slumping against the wooden back of the bench.  
  
He was still shattered. Sleep had failed to be restful. Especially the night before, which had been full of dreams of Ron kissing him, touching him, saying 'I love you', over and over until Severus had woken up drenched in sweat and close to vomiting.  
  
“So... you and Ron.”  
  
His heart began to race; Charlie knew. He had to. Tongue glued to the roof of his mouth, Severus couldn't get any words out before Charlie continued.  
  
“I'm really glad that you're there.” Charlie reached into his pocket and pulled out a carton of cigarettes. He lit one with a Muggle lighter and sucked on it a few times before he continued. “And I think it means a lot to him that you're here today.”  
“It's nothing.” Severus looked at the grass beneath his feet.  
“And I don't think that there's any point in pretending that you're not his favourite,” Charlie went on. “I mean... you're there every waking minute of the day. When we see him all he talks about is you.”  
“What do you want me to say, Charlie?” Severus asked, suddenly feeling every single poorly slept minute of his last few weeks. He crossed one leg over the other and folded his hands in his lap. “Just tell me what you're driving at here and I'll answer you.”  
“I'm not driving at anything.” Charlie frowned. “I'm saying thank you. For being there for him.”  
“Should you be thanking me?” Severus couldn't help but ask. “Should you be happy that he's falling in love with the person that circumstance forced him to feel for?”  
  
A few moments passed before he realised what he'd said. Charlie looked at him with wide eyes.  
  
“What exactly has Ron said?”  
“He told me yesterday,” Severus said quietly, feeling like he was betraying Ron's trust. “Looked me dead in the eye and told me he loved me. How much more sick and twisted can this story become? Am I the only one who finds it so fucking disturbing that they're losing sleep over it?”  
  
To his horror, his throat thickened and tears welled in his eyes. Blinking furiously, Severus fought to cling onto control. Charlie sat in silence.  
  
“He's not even nineteen.” Severus shook his head. “He doesn't even know what love is.”  
“You knew what love was way before you were nineteen. And so did I. And neither of us got to be with our first loves so we know how fucking hard it is to pick yourself up and carry on.”  
  
Charlie took a forceful drag from his cigarette and blew out the smoke in an angry huff. Severus kept it to himself that he thought the man looked like the dragons which had given him a career. But Charlie seethed on and it seemed like their conversation had touched a painful nerve.  
  
“When do you plan to go back to Romania, Charlie?”  
“Really? You want to make me feel even more shit right now by talking about a job I don't think I can ever go back to but is everything to me? Really?”  
  
Severus didn't know what to do with the agitation pouring out of the twenty-seven-year-old next to him. Charlie flicked his cigarette on the floor and stamped on it with his foot.  
  
“I just think that if you can be happy together, you should be. Like I told you that night in the pub, age is just a number. And I don't want Ron being hurt even more by you backing out when it's too late. If you can't love him, can't be with him, then fuck off now whilst the damage can still be repaired-”  
  
Charlie was up on his feet, mid-flow and red-faced when a strangled bellow came from the house. Severus knew it instantly. He didn't want for instruction or coaxing from Charlie; he was on his feet and running back around the house before he could draw breath. He threw open the back door to see Ron cowering in the far corner, his back to the wall, his hands clamped over his ears, screaming for as long as his lungs would allow before he had to draw breath again. Bewildered, Severus looked around the kitchen. Ginny stood by the fire, looking pale and frightened, and Hermione was frozen in place, sitting at the table, her hands outstretched to -  
  
“The cards,” Severus muttered to himself.  
  
The tarot deck was worn and faded; clearly well-loved. It was the sight of their dog-ears which stopped him from scooping the lot up and chucking them in the kitchen fire.  
  
“Get these out,” he ground out, finding his jaw tight and his voice threatening. He shoved them across the wood at one of the girls. “Now.”  
  
He rounded the table and went down onto his knees, taking Ron immediately into his arms. Tall as he was, Ron seemed impossibly small huddled there on the floor, and he was enveloped completely by Severus' embrace. He forced a firm grip and gently rocked back and forth, allowing Ron to scream into the front of his shirt.  
  
“He can't hurt you any more,” Severus whispered, and allowed his lips to find the flaming red hair which he had grown so very fond of. “They can't hurt either of us any more. You will be okay.”  
  
Ron reduced the noise to a constant low moan. Severus glanced around at their audience.  
  
“Can you walk?”  
  
When Ron indicated not, Severus braced everything he had and lifted Ron up into his arms. It was awkward and painful but to get Ron to safety, he ignored everything – the nagging ache in the small of his back, the pull of the muscles in his shoulders, the eyes of everyone on them both. He had no idea where he was going but he started climbing stairs, to get anywhere away from the watching eyes. He shouldered into the first room he found, fearing that he might drop Ron if he didn't put him down due to worsening pain with each further step. The room had two beds and smelt faintly of gunpowder.  
  
One of them was occupied. George Weasley was stretched out on his side on one of the beds, looking over at the other. Severus had an idea of what he had interrupted, but with his muscles screaming he couldn't hold Ron any longer. He laid him on the spare bed with very little grace and panted as he resumed his position on his knees. He found Ron's hands and grasped them.  
  
“Here, Ronnie.” George's voice was gentle and kind. Severus looked up at him, but all George did was drape the blanket from his own bed over Ron's shivering body. He then gripped his brother's knee through the fabric, did the same to Severus' shoulder as he passed, and then left them alone.  
  
Severus waited, hoping that Ron would calm down and that the shivers would subside. He heard the sounds of the house reacting below them and was glad that he'd moved to get Ron away from them – the last thing the redhead would want was to be ogled at that moment. One look at his face was testament that he was mortified enough.  
  
“You rescued me,” Ron murmured after some time, just as pins and needles were starting to prick Severus' legs.  
“I suppose.”  
“Why didn't you rescue me when he had me, Severus?” The whisper was faint and so very childlike. Severus might as well have been doused with iced water.  
  
He tried to think of an answer but the only one which sprung to mind might cause irreparable damage between them.  
  
“Say what you're thinking.” Ron's eyelids fluttered shut.  
“Why didn't _you_ come for _me_ sooner? Why did you leave me?”  
  
Severus buried his face in the edge of the mattress, ashamed, hurt and completely addicted all at once. His nose was close to Ron's arm and he inhaled him freely.  
  
“I wanted to come.”  
“I wanted to, too.” Severus glanced up at him.  
  
His expression was beautiful despite the fact that it was entirely made of sorrow. Severus pushed up with his hands and fell onto the bed before the blood could assault his calf muscles. Ron dragged the blanket over them both and then snuggled close, just as Severus could remember him doing in the cell.  
  
That frozen, hellish wasteland, of which he had blocked out so much – had refused to think about.  
  
And only then did it all click into place: with the return of Ron's voice and relative mental stability, Severus had no choice but to face the horrors of his incarceration, the things he had trained his brain to ignore and even tried to forget. There was nothing to mask the pain any more, no greater cause to work for.  
  
Lying there on the tiny single bed of a dead boy, draped in a blanket which smelt of the wrong Weasley and with Ron in his arms, Severus held on for dear life. He felt hounded, chased by monsters which he had so long kept at bay – those from their captivity, those from the wars, his childhood. Monsters were coming for him, and he only had a broken teenager to hide behind.


	16. Chapter Sixteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every day is a test of their strength, willpower, and the desire to save their own skins >> He would wear magenta.
> 
> Content / Warnings: Story warnings: Dark!fic, EWE, Canon compliant to the end of DH but Snape didn't die, Resurgent fic; Chapter warnings: angst; mentioned kidnapping, torture, abuse, non-con, trauma; hospital setting, mental illness, suicidal thoughts.
> 
> **Blink and you'll miss it het! RW/HG**

  
It had surprised him how quickly the small bungalow had become 'his'. Ron looked around at it and thought about how strange it would be to leave it, to have to live in a space which was not solely his own again. He called the shots within the walls of his hospital home. Though he was keen to leave, to officially be 'released' and deemed sane enough to cope with the real world, his stomach gave a wobble whenever he actually thought about what that might entail.  
  
People. Noise. Appeasing others.  
  
Ron accepted that he'd been living in a bubble for months on end. He'd only had to consider his own needs and desires in that time because that had been all that his mind could actually cope with. But he'd returned to the land of the living and had moved on – what came next was _properly_ moving on; moving back home and getting on with his life.  
  
He was nineteen and yet he barely knew what being an adult meant to him. He'd turned eighteen in the midst of the Horcrux hunt, camping in a tent with his two best friends and had dropped out of school. It was hardly the normal life of a teenager. Then he'd been captured and gone - as he liked to refer to it - bonkers. He'd been locked inside his own mind for a time and there he was, sitting in a independence-granting bungalow in the grounds of a psychiatric hospital.  
  
He wasn't sure he even really knew how to live. For the past two years, his life had not been his own to control.  
  
Ron nervously wiped his palms on his jeans and tried to ground himself. If he lost it they'd never let him leave and, despite his fears, his freedom beckoned with a fervour he'd never felt before.  
  
Beyond the grounds of the hospital there would be all the things he loved – alcohol, unhealthy food and, he hoped, a keener relationship with everybody. The hospital did things to people, he'd realised, once he'd come back to his senses. Something about the walls hushed the true personalities of those who visited. He wanted to be outside with them, to see them be themselves again.  
  
Severus, for example, seemed to grow quieter with each passing visit. No matter how hard Ron tried to coax him into discussion or even a smile, Severus resisted. Ron didn't blame him, knowing how much time the wizard had spent in the hospital when he didn't have to – he presumed that Severus was simply waiting for the right moment to bolt. His family were also quiet, but they'd at least livened up for his birthday. His mum had made his favourite cake and they'd celebrated in his bungalow, big smiles and loud laughs. Severus had remained shy and reserved, however. He'd waited until everybody had left until he handed over his gift – a beautiful chessboard of sparkling crystal.  
  
Ron looked at it, the pieces frozen three-quarters of a way through a game. He'd been so pleased by the gift that he'd broken the promise he'd made to himself by throwing his arms around Severus and trying to kiss him. _No open displays of affection; nothing over the top._  
  
It was clear that the man was uncomfortable with physical closeness between them. He had backed away from that particular kiss. Ron tried to not think about it, because whenever he did his stomach seemed to clench. Following this, always, fear overcame him, fear of a situation which he assumed was coming but desperately wanted to put off. Severus would try and leave him soon enough, given that he was no longer catatonic and Severus had achieved what his mother had asked of him.  
  
It was only by fluke that Ron knew what his mum had begged Severus to attempt. That it had been the last chance at retrieving him from the abyss. If he was honest, Ron still wasn't sure if he was glad that Severus had succeeded.  
  
There had been such tenderness between them the first time he'd gone on a home visit. Cuddled on Fred's bed, clinging to one another for dear life. He thought he knew what Severus wanted, but ever since he'd been increasingly distant. He'd declined the invitation to be at The Burrow when Ron went home. He'd said he didn't want to intrude. Ron had been forced to work hard to conceal how much the rejection had hurt. He felt like a child playing at being an adult.  
  
He was heading home to a world he had no idea if he was ready for. He was an adult and yet he couldn't remember feeling like one before, or living like one. Once he left the hospital he would be free of medication times and would no longer be supervised with sharp objects. The doctors were happy that he was ready for it, but Ron was afraid – he had no idea if he would be able to cope. He didn't want to have to go through a re-admission. Plus there was the matter of fact that he would be returning to The Burrow and his parents' rules when he had lived without them. Harry and Hermione had several months' jump on him; they had grown into sophisticated, capable adults who knew what they wanted and were on their way in life. Even his little sister had the jump on him. Ron felt he was nothing but a recovered nutcase – that his stay in Benjy's defined him and would continue to do so when he left.  
  
Biting hard into his lip, he tried to quash the rising anxiety. Ron tasted blood just as a knock came on the front door. His healers weren't idiots. They'd upped the amount of therapy sessions prior to discharge to support him. He was glad of that, just as glad as he was that every time he woke up, he seemed to feel stronger.  
  
 _I will beat this._  
  
No longer a child but unsure of his status as an adult, Ron found it hard to gauge how he might have felt had he not been captured. Would the war have aged him efficiently, or would he still feel like a child without the harrowing experiences he'd gone through at the hands of Rodolphus Lestrange?  
  
He shivered just thinking about the wizard who had played with him as a cat taunts prey. There was another knock on the door. Ron swallowed and rose to greet his Healer.  
  
***  
“I'm so glad you're home.” Ron stood frozen as Harry held on tight. They hadn't been touchy-feely friends before the war.  
  
 _It changed everything._  
  
Including, it turned out, his family's wealth. Looking at them properly for the first time as a collective, everyone was dressed somewhat better than he last remembered them. They looked good. As healthy as the recent misery would allow. That comforted him. Charlie had told him on the quiet that because of everything he'd been through, there was a small amount of money deposited into a bank account of his very own – something Ron had never had before and had no idea how to manage, but also that their dad's promotion under Kingsley had seen the family's star rising high for a change.  
  
Ron was pleased. His mother deserved to have nice things. They all did.  
  
Harry released him and beamed at him with a grin wider than Ron could ever remember him grinning. Harry, too, deserved everything he could dream of.  
  
He began to feel like a present at a children's party, passed around from hand to hand until he was stripped bare, left awkwardly sticking out and feeling exhausted and vulnerable. He loved every single person in the room with him but the kitchen felt tiny and far too hot in their combined presence.  
  
“Why don't you take your things up to your room?” His mum suggested, giving him a knowing look. “Harry, give Ron a hand, will you? Hermione?”  
  
Eagerly both of them sprang forward and picked up the few bags that he'd brought home from the hospital. He followed them empty-handed and began to climb the stairs of his childhood home. Only a few flights had him panting. The hospital had warned him that physically he had become very unfit. Being thin was no longer an advantage – he was weak. He intended to do something about that as soon as he possibly could.  
  
The clamour of his family below faded to a gentle level and he relaxed a little, letting his fingers trail over the wallpaper and the odd, mismatched bannisters as he climbed through the house. Harry and Hermione had left the door open to his room. Ron paused on the threshold. Not a single thing had changed since the last time he'd slept in it, the night before he'd been captured. His mother had even resisted re-making his bed. It was sloppy and creased and the pillow was wonky – just as he liked it.  
  
It was then that he felt eyes on him and looked at Harry and Hermione, who were wearing identical smiles which made them look slightly crazed.  
  
“I thought I was the one who was batshit?” Ron asked, suppressing a laugh.  
“My face hurts.” Harry confirmed, reaching up to rub at his cheeks. “I told you that'd creep him out.”  
  
He broke ranks and threw himself down at the end of Ron's bed. Hermione huffed at him and folded her arms over her chest, but Ron could see the smile pulling at her lips.  
  
“It's so good to have you home,” she said softly, beckoning Ron into the room with a jerk of her head. She closed the door behind him with a flap of her fingers before settling next to Harry.  
  
Crazed smiles gone, both of them were looking at him with a certain anticipation. Ron shifted his weight between his feet and buried his hands into his pockets. This was what he'd been dreading – long, uncomfortable silences. He'd made his peace with silence over the past months. He kind of liked it.  
  
“We wanted to say...” Harry broke off and looked down at his knees. “I mean... that... we know...”  
  
Ron waited.  
  
“We know nothing can be the same.” Hermione took over after throwing Harry a roll of her eyes. “That things have changed for you and for us and that you've been through things which we can't even begin to understand...”  
“Though we want to,” Harry added hastily. “We want to understand if you want to tell us. But if you don't, if you never want to talk about any of it ever again then that's cool too. Okay?”  
“And no matter what,” Hermione went on, “We'll always be your best friends and we'll support you. Through everything.” Her voice wobbled on 'everything' and her cheeks tinged with colour.  
  
Ron had a feeling he knew what she was referring to. He opened his mouth to respond to them, his best friends sitting there so eagerly and nervously on his mostly dilapidated bed, but couldn't make his tongue work. He ended up half-falling, half-throwing himself in between them. And somewhere in the uncomfortable jumble of limbs, hair and tears, a knot of tension loosened in his gut. He'd spoken with his healers about his fears that Harry and Hermione would no longer want to know him, that their friendship would be over because there was an unbreakable barrier erected between them by his abduction. No professional words had been able to comfort him and it wasn't until _that_ moment that Ron understood why – he always had needed to be smacked in the face with the truth before he believed it.  
  
Harry gave a loud sniff and suddenly leapt off the bed. “I'm just going to... you two need some time alone. I'll see you downstairs.”  
  
He was gone in the blink of an eye and the slammed door made Ron jump.  
  
“Is he okay?” he asked doubtfully, staring at a 'Ron's Room – Keep Out!' sign which had fallen off the door at some point.  
“He's getting there. He was beside himself when you were gone. We both were.”  
  
Hermione hung her head, blushing hard. Tears dripped from her chin. Ron assessed their positions – they were physically closer than they had been since the day of his abduction. After the Battle was over, things moved ridiculously quickly between them. He'd expected Hermione to put up a fight but if anything she had led the charge. They'd moved faster than Ron perhaps had been comfortable with, but he hadn't wanted to lose face and he hadn't wanted to lose her.  
  
“What I said. That goes for... for personal things, too...” She sniffed hard and straightened up. “I know that... things happened to you which you can't take back and that... you probably want different things now. I'm prepared for that. But if you wanted... if you want... Me... then I'm still here, Ron. If you want me.”  
  
Dry mouthed and red-faced himself, Ron looked at her with honest terror. How had he ended up having this conversation so quickly? _The same way as you ended up sleeping together so fast, too. You had to wait for everything and now..._  
  
He cleared his throat, still not really knowing what to say.  
  
“It's okay.” It wasn't, because she started to cry harder as she spoke. Ron couldn't think of anything less okay than her upset and his confusion towards whatever it was that he wanted.  
  
If he wanted anything at all. Because Severus had held him only a few floors below, not so long ago, and Ron had been sure that he and the older wizard were bound together by a shared history and desires. Hermione had been nowhere in that equation.  
  
But when it came down to it he couldn't sit there and watch her sob. It hurt his chest. Ron pulled her into a tight embrace and stroked her hair. It only made her cry harder but she clung onto him and pressed her face into his t-shirt. The damp worked through the fabric to his skin.  
  
Her emotions flooded into him, bringing moisture to his own eyes. He buried his face in her hair, smelling the familiar fruity scent which, in his younger years, had been all it took to make him hard and wanting. It only smelt comforting as he inhaled it on his childhood bed as a much-changed man.  
  
Hermione lifted her head to look at him. Something visibly broke inside her when she saw his own emotion, but she sat up properly and wiped her eyes on the back of her hand. She smoothed out his t-shirt for no reason. And before Ron could respond, she had leant forward and pecked him on the lips once, twice, a harder third time.  
  
The softness disappeared and he felt her get off the bed. He opened his eyes, never having noticed that they'd closed. Hermione was scrubbing her face dry and drying her hands on her jeans.  
  
“I love you,” she whispered, her voice strained and her eyes red. “If you still love me, then... you know where I am.”  
  
Ron face-planted into the bed covers before he'd even heard the door close.  
  
He'd been prepared for his friendships to be strained, for nobody to know what to say to him. He felt a fool for never once considering what he would have to do when it came to the romance he'd been desperate for before someone locked him in a cell with Severus Snape and forced him into homosexual acts.  
  
***  
“Can't sleep either?”  
  
Ron jumped at the voice which appeared from his left. He was standing at the sink, an empty glass in his hand, looking aimlessly out of the dark window. It was early in the morning, too early to be awake but he had never fallen asleep. It was always going to be strange, sleeping in his own bed again, but Ron had tossed and turned and sleep had never come. His medication had made him drowsy like normal, but his brain was too full to switch off.  
  
George looked rough even in the dark. Ron could see the outline of his puffy eyes and face, his tousled hair and pale skin.  
  
“I'm glad you're home,” George said, pulling out a chair and sitting down.  
“D'you want a drink?” Ron asked.  
  
The glass felt cool in his fingers. He had grown used to safety plastic. He re-filled it from the tap and took another from the draining board for George. He sat down opposite him. Neither of them bothered to light any candles. Ron heard sharp, fast gulps.  
  
“I missed you,” Ron blurted awkwardly. George hadn't been to see him very often in the hospital.  
“I'm sorry I didn't come more.”  
  
There was a hollowness in George's tone which made Ron shiver. He sounded so empty.  
  
“I was just...” George coughed. “I s'pose I was afraid if I came and they saw what was going on, they wouldn't let me leave.”  
“Like Mum'd ever let that happen.”  
“She let it happen to you.”  
“She didn't exactly have a choice, did she? I wasn't...”  
“I know.”  
  
George gulped at his water some more.  
  
“So what's 'going on', as you put it?” Ron tapped a silent beat out on the kitchen table with his fingers.  
“What isn't?”  
  
Ron waited for him to go on. He was too emotionally and physically tired to lead the conversation. George probably didn't want to talk anyway. From what he'd been told, his brother was a borderline recluse and had been vying with Ron to be the most mute member of the Weasley family since the Battle. There was no blame in that, Ron thought. There was a certain beauty to never opening your mouth, to always let the words die on your tongue – after a while, they stopped coming. The peace was like a blanket.  
  
“They keep telling me I have to stop it.”  
“Stop what?”  
“Using his wand.”  
“Oh. I didn't realise... I thought it was lost?”  
“Don't be a twat. I took it out of his hand myself. I can't bring myself to even touch mine. I have to have something of this.”  
“You already do,” Ron said softly.  
  
He'd grieved after the Battle – tried to come to terms with the fact that the boy who gave him his fear of spiders was dead and never coming back. But then he'd been taken and whilst Fred had played on his mind in the long nights in the cell, there was an element of rawness to facing George that he hadn't expected. Had he ever really grieved properly? Had he reconciled to only one twin remaining?  
  
From the odd thumping of his pulse in his ears, Ron had to assume not.  
  
“Did you know that our wands were twins too?”  
“No.”  
“Both had hairs from the same unicorn tail. His wand works just like mine did. It knows me. Maybe it thinks I'm him.”  
  
Ron had nothing to say to that. He felt inept.  
  
“I don't know if... If I can keep this up much longer.”  
“Keep what up?” Ron asked cautiously. He knew George had thrown himself back into work at Wheezes before anyone thought he should have.  
“Breathing.”  
  
Despite everything, especially the fact that he had spent the last several weeks drinking from plastic cups and being supervised with plastic cutlery, Ron's first reaction to George's admission was horror.  
  
 _It's not like you've never been there._  
  
Ron didn't remember much of the psychosis which had gripped him after Severus' rejection of him at St Mungo's, but he'd been told. The repeated self-harm, the need for constant sedation...  
  
“No wonder you hated the hospital then.”  
“I'm glad you understand.”  
“More than most. But that doesn't mean I don't hate it. That I don't want to make you better, right now, this second.”  
  
George was laughing as he got up and rounded the table. He pressed a hand to Ron's shoulder.  
  
“You can hate it. But you know that you can't make it better. Only I can know that and right now, I'm pretty fucking sure it's a no.”  
  
Ron covered George's hand with his own.  
  
“Try.” The beg was quiet and, to Ron, sounded completely pathetic. Surely he should have more fire and gumption for a brother who had just admitted suicidal thoughts?  
  
George left the kitchen without commenting. Ron settled into the darkness, alone again.  
  
***  
His fingers shook as he fastened the last few buttons. He'd not worn robes for a long time. It felt strange and grown up to be wearing fabric of such a calibre and not to be wearing other clothes underneath. They were too tailored to get away with jeans or even a t-shirt. He felt as though one gust of wind would expose him.  
  
Not that there were many gusts of wind in a shop with the door shut.  
  
It _was_ a joke shop, though, and he knew better than to put anything past his twin brothers.  
  
His way had been clear after sitting alone in the kitchen for a good few hours. He'd watched the sun rise. Heard the house creak to life around him. The next time he saw George, he made his intentions clear. George hadn't responded but whilst there was no protest, Ron took it as permission.  
  
He stood looking at himself in a mirror on the wall of a bedroom he'd got Harry to forge out of a broom cupboard. He'd not set foot in the room his brothers had shared above the shop, let alone slept in it. No – he'd asked Harry to enlarge the space given that his magic was still erratic and moved a bed in there. Their mother had put up a fight but after a long, tearful talk, Ron made sure that he got what he wanted.  
  
Magenta didn't suit him, it was fair to say, but Ron doubted it suited anybody.  
  
He needed normality and a job. George needed a break and a business hand he could trust. Ron made it clear at every possible opportunity that he wasn't there to replace Fred even though George had never accused him of trying to. Ron saw his opportunity to be useful – to ensure that George kept on breathing.  
  
Even though donning the work robes meant facing the public, Ron was sure of his path.  
  
Severus had agreed that it would be good for him to have something to keep busy with. There'd been a brief lecture on not overdoing it. Ron had listened because, after everything, he felt that Severus deserved his respect.  
  
Severus had made him dinner and they'd talked until the clock chimed midnight and Ron started drooping. He couldn't take his eyes off the wizard who had quite literally pulled him back from the brink. Every move he made was fascinating – his expressions, the motion of his body as he walked, even the house in which he lived.  
  
Ron had hugged him goodbye even though it clearly made Severus uncomfortable. He didn't know how else to express what he was feeling.  
  
He sure as hell didn't know what he wanted. Hermione had said no more since the night in his bedroom. Severus was cool and reserved and seemed to be angling for a more pastoral, advisory role. Except for when he hugged there was a desperation in his clutches that Ron couldn't miss. A look in his eye.  
  
And Ron had no idea what to do with any of it.  
  
So he would work. He would help George. He would wear magenta.


	17. Chapter Seventeen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He is not fine.

**Content / Warnings:** Story warnings: Dark!fic, EWE, Canon compliant to the end of DH but Snape didn't die, Resurgent fic; _Chapter warnings: angst; mentioned kidnapping, torture, abuse, non-con, trauma; hospital setting, mental illness; age disparity._  
  
  
Checking his hair in the mirror, Ron sighed.  
  
He looked pale and drawn. He’d been working long hours in the shop with George, too long if truth be told. But he didn’t feel he could turn the work down when he’d become another crutch for George to prop himself up with.  
  
There were deep purple circles beneath his eyes and, between the tiredness and his medication, he wasn’t sure if he was going to make it through dinner. He had to, though, because he’d been looking forward to it for days and it would be the first time that he and Severus had managed to spend any time together alone since his release from hospital.  
  
Severus was cooking him dinner. Ron straightened his jumper over his hips and stepped back.  
  
He would have to do.  
  
He supposed he should have made more effort for a night as special as he was planning to have. He’d had enough of waiting. Severus had invited him over and Ron didn’t intend on returning to the Burrow until the sun was up again.  
  
Ron had had a lot of time to think about his relationship and desires in the long hours serving customers in George’s shop. And his opinion remained unchanged: there was an undeniable, unbreakable connection between the two of them, forged in desperate times. He knew what he wanted.  
  
He unhooked his jacket from the back of the bedroom door and shrugged into it. He picked up the bag which contained a bottle of whisky and some chocolates. George had only vaguely teased him over his gifts.  
  
Taking a deep breath, Ron opened the bedroom door.  
  
***  
  
“This place is really great,” he said earnestly, gesturing around at Severus’ new house. “It’s so… nice.”  
  
He made a face at his useless vocabulary and twitched back one of the curtains covering the huge French doors of the living room. The beach was pitch black below them, the darkness only broken by the flashing of the local lighthouse and some buoys far out to sea.  
  
“I thought so,” Severus said quietly, from where he sat on the sofa nursing a glass of the whisky that Ron had brought.  
  
It was his favourite, apparently. Ron wasn’t sure how he’d known that, but there had definitely been something in his decision making process in the shop.  
  
“Dinner will be another half an hour,” Severus said. “So make yourself at home.”  
  
It was the invite that Ron had been waiting for. He bounded over to the sofa and threw himself down on it. He kicked his boots off and tucked his legs up under his body. Severus watched him with a bemused expression.  
  
“What?” Ron asked nervously. “You said to make myself at home. So I did.”  
“No, it’s not that.” Severus shook his head. “It’s that I can’t get used to seeing you be so lively and animated. Awake, even. It feels as though you were asleep for a very long time.”  
“I suppose that’s one way of putting it. Nicer than saying I went bonkers and got committed.”  
  
Severus shot him a small smile and sipped his drink. Ron looked over at the fire crackling in the grate of a magnificent brick fireplace.  
  
“Have you settled in?” he asked.  
“I think so… I didn’t have much to bring. I got rid of everything in the old house except for the books.”  
“You didn’t keep anything of your mum and dad’s?” Ron asked in surprise.  
  
Severus stared down at the glass in his hand. “I don’t really have fond memories of anything to do with my parents. I have their wedding rings, and that’s it.”  
“Do you feel better for getting rid of it all then?”  
  
Ron rested his elbow on the back of the sofa and turned to face Severus.  
  
“I do, you know. It’s been quite… cathartic, having it all cleared out and thrown away. Almost as if the horrible memories have gone with it.”  
“Was none of your childhood good?”  
“Very little. My father despised what my mother was and loathed what I was born to be. It was a recipe for disaster from day one. They fought, he was abusive, my mother wanted me to be more than I could be because god only knew her marriage was a failure and she had to search elsewhere for her dreams… It was a blessing when it was over, to be honest.”  
“Would you do anything differently if you could do it over again?”  
  
Severus frowned at him. “Why all the questions, Ron?”  
“Am I not allowed to ask questions?” Ron raised his eyebrows.  
“No… just remember that you’ve been catatonic for months and now you won’t shut up.”  
“Making up for lost time.” Ron grinned.  
  
Severus smiled at him again and that time did not look away. Ron stretched his arm out and placed his hand on Severus’ shoulder.  
  
“Permission to come closer?” Ron asked, digging deep to find playfulness like he could remember doing in the cell, because Severus responded to it.  
“If you want to.”  
  
Ron tried to keep his annoyance of Severus’ nonchalance off his face as he scooted closer over the cushions, so that they were sitting next to one another. Ron immediately wormed one arm around Severus’ waist and was thrilled when an arm came to rest around his shoulders. Severus was warm next to him and Ron leant into his body.  
  
He’d spent so much time with George that he had neglected Severus, which he recognised as being completely unfair given just how much Severus had given him over the past months.  
  
“I’m sorry I’ve not been round,” he whispered, leaning over to press a kiss into Severus’ cheek. “I’ve been working all hours that Merlin sends in George’s shop, trying to keep him from going off the deep end.”  
“And what about you?” Severus asked astutely. “Who’s keeping you from the edge, Ron?”  
  
Embarrassed, Ron looked away; Severus sighed.  
  
“I’ve missed you,” the older wizard confessed. “But I kept my distance because you need to rebuild your life. You can’t do that with me hanging around, reminding you of everything.”  
“I want you around,” Ron said.  
  
Severus’ expression became sour and he took a long drink of whisky.  
  
“I really do,” Ron went on. “Tonight… tonight I wanted to show you how much I want you around.”  
  
Throwing caution to the wind, he twisted and swung one leg over both of Severus’, so that he was sitting in the man’s lap looking into his face. Severus froze and looked up at him with pain in his eyes.  
  
“Stop it, Ron. Get off me.”  
“Why?”  
“Because this is completely inappropriate, and I feel uncomfortable. Please, sit down properly.”  
  
Feeling as though someone had whipped him, Ron clambered off Severus and retreated back to his end of the sofa. The tension in the room was suddenly so thick he could almost taste it. Heat rushed to his face and moisture to his eyes – it had been a long time since anybody had rebuffed him like that.  
  
Rodolphus Lestrange had never pushed him away. Not that Ron had instigated much of their intimacy, but what they shared the older wizard had always been willing to give. Too willing, in some cases. Ron shuddered as he remembered the times that Rodolphus had forced him when he would rather have stopped.  
  
 _Stop it. Stop it. Stop it._ Ron chanted to himself over and over, trying to make the thoughts go away. He didn’t need to fall apart on the first night that Severus and he were properly spending together, without a hospital or without other family present in the Burrow. They were alone, like adults, and Ron had hoped the evening would play out as adults might play it.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I only wanted to be with you. To be close to you.”  
“Is that what you want?” Severus asked. He sounded tired. “How do you know?”  
“How do I know what?”  
“That you want to be close to me?”  
“Because I do.”  
  
There was another exasperated sigh before Severus got to his feet and started drifting about the living room. Ron watched him skirt his fingers along the edge of the mantelpiece and the nervous twitch of a muscle in his cheek.  
  
“I think we need to decide where this is going,” Severus said delicately, keeping his eyes on his feet. “As in… where we draw the line and how we move on with our lives.”  
“That’s easy,” Ron said. “We pick up where we left off before I was taken and continue with whatever it was we had in that cell.”  
“I don’t think that’s going to be possible, Ron.”  
“Why? Because you’re scared? I’m scared. I still have nightmares too, Severus. I wet the bed the other night. I’m nineteen. Do you know how mortifying it is to piss the bed at nineteen?”  
  
Severus shook his head and turned away.  
  
“These past few weeks have been so quiet,” he went on. “Without you here. I’ve hardly known what to do with myself to be honest.”  
“I wanted to be here,” Ron promised, sitting forward. “I wanted to be with you…”  
“Picking up where we left off?” Severus asked sarcastically.  
“Why is that such a problem for you to imagine?”  
“Because it can’t be done,” Severus responded bitingly. “It can’t. We were both abducted and subjected to tortures that neither one of us could stop. You were treated like a sex slave by Lestrange and god only knows how much psychological damage he caused you.”  
“I wasn’t,” Ron protested.  
“Wasn’t what?”  
“His sex slave.” He got up and folded his arms over his chest. Suddenly he felt very bare. “I consented, Severus. I willingly had sex with him.”  
“Of course you did. He would have made your life miserable if you’d resisted.”  
“No, I don’t mean like that… sometimes… sometimes the sex was good. I enjoyed it. And I don’t know what that makes me, or if I was ever really a victim, but… it’s the truth.”  
  
Severus laughed then. “Only a victim would say that they were never a victim, that it was somehow all their own fault.”  
“But my doctors agree!” Ron found himself growing angry. “Even though I was held against my will, I willingly consented to sex with him. Sex and everything in between. He was filthy. And now… you saying that we can’t pick up where we left off, it makes me wonder what good getting us out did. You won’t be with me. You don’t _want_ to be with me. Is it because he touched me? Because you think I’m dirty, is that it?”  
  
His mouth was getting away from him and he could feel his sanity going in the same direction. He rummaged in his pocket for a spare vial of calming draught and knocked half of it back. This was not how he had wanted the evening to go.  
  
“I don’t think you’re dirty, Ron. Don’t be ridiculous.”  
“Then what is it? Why won’t you love me, Severus?”  
  
He stood waiting for an answer that didn’t come.  
  
“This is all going too fast,” Severus said finally. “I think you should leave.”  
“Why, so we can sweep it all under the carpet until the next time? I don’t think so!” Ron shook his head. “I’ve barely seen you and this is how you want to spend the night? Fighting.”  
“Quite. We’ve barely seen one another.”  
“What’s that supposed to mean?”  
  
There was a loud thud as Severus slammed down his empty tumbler. When he turned to look at Ron, his face was an unattractive shade of puce and his eyes were narrowed.  
  
“A simple firecall would have done.”  
“You’re telling me that you’re upset because I haven’t been round recently?”  
  
Severus stared at him.  
  
“Oh, wow, that’s really fucking great, Severus!” Ron stalked to the furthest part of the room. “You told me I had to get back on my feet and I’m doing that.”  
  
“Getting back on your feet is not achieved by spending every waking moment trying to keep your brother propped up on his own.”  
“So should I just leave him to his own devices? Let him kill himself and then have to live with the guilt of that, too?”  
“Of course not… but it would be… It would just seem that I have spent so long dealing with your issues, and your problems, and your continued psychosis and ill health… the second you had the chance to spend time with me, to see and help _me_ come to terms with what happened, you haven’t bothered.”  
  
Ron clenched his hands into fists. “What would you have said if I’d been round here every day? That you wanted space? That you wanted to recover alone? No, tell me,” he went on, as Severus made to interrupt, “What would you have done if I’d turned up here with a suitcase and said I was moving in and that we were going to get through all this together, as a couple. As lovers? What would you have done?”  
  
Sheepishly, Severus looked at the floor when he replied, “Told you to go home and stop being ridiculous.”  
  
“Because believe me, that’s what I wanted to do,” Ron half-shouted. “All I want is to be with you, Severus. But I was giving you space. Someone told me that would be a good idea because everything had been so intense for us that some space might do you good. So I gave you it. And now you’re chucking it back in my bloody face? For fuck’s sake!”  
  
His voice had risen through his rant and he was shouting by the end. Suddenly he felt very drained and low, as though unnoticed anticipation had been building in his body towards this night and nothing was going to plan.  
  
“I just don’t think it can work.” Severus’ voice was pained. “You are nineteen. I am thirty-nine. That’s a twenty year age gap and you have your entire life ahead of you. You survived a war, you survived abduction by a maniac. You could have so much more. So much more than what you seem to want.”  
  
“And that IS what I want,” Ron said stubbornly. “You. I don’t even know why except for that you are the only person I could ever be with. You or Rodolphus, and I killed him, so that’s that.”  
  
The silence which followed was like a massive smack in the face to Ron. His knees went weak and sweat beaded on his brow, but he didn’t know why.  
  
“Ron?” Severus approached him cautiously. “Are you feeling okay?”  
“I feel strange…” the voice didn’t even sound like his.  
“Come and sit down.” Severus took his arm but Ron stayed put.  
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”  
“Why are you sorry?”  
“For being… for being…”  
  
***  
An hour later, Ron couldn’t remember what had followed that failed attempt at talking. He was wrapped up warm in bed but there was no recollection of what had happened in the lost time. It was like the majority of his time in hospital. And, wrapped in bedding which smelt wholly of Severus, Ron couldn’t banish the thought from his head that they’d send him back there. That he was crazy again and they would never trust him again.  
  
The thought made him want to vomit. He had to get away. If they couldn’t find him they couldn’t put him back in Benjy’s and make him work so hard.  
  
“Ron, calm down.” Severus’ voice was quiet but stern. “You’re safe. You’re still in in my house. I will let nothing bad happen to you.”  
Hands squeezed his own. They grounded Ron a little. He squeezed back until he was holding on so tightly that his bones ached.  
“Don’t put me back in there,” he begged. The words were garbled. “I don’t want to go back.”  
“Back where?”  
“Hospital.”  
  
Ron slumped against Severus when he embraced him. He buried his face in Severus’ chest and shakily exhaled. A hand was stroking his hair.  
  
“I won’t let that happen,” Severus whispered in his ear. “You’re safe. You’re with me. You’re safe.”  
  
It took several repetitions of that promise before Ron felt able to pull away and sit up properly. He felt so drained. At least in the hospital he had never really noticed how physically bad he felt – it was all too much to pay attention to.  
  
“Would you like a drink?” Severus asked. “Here, eat this.”  
  
He placed a bar of chocolate in Ron’s lap, the wrapping already ripped open for ease. Ron felt as though his head was stuffed full of cotton wool.  
  
“What happened?” The words were slurred but intact. “What did I do?””  
“You just got upset.” Severus handed him a glass of water. “And you turned on yourself.”  
“Eh?”  
“You were punching yourself, screaming like a banshee… I think you just took a slight break from sanity, just for a minute.”  
“Oh god, don’t put me back in there Severus, please. Don’t do it. I’ll be good. I’ll be better-“  
“I’m not going to put you back in there, listen to me.”  
“Can’t go back.” Ron realised he was slopping water all over the duvet. “Can’t.”  
“And you won’t. I promise.”  
  
Ron opened his mouth when Severus offered him a chunk of chocolate. It was sweet and creamy. He swallowed without hesitation. He took another and by the time he had swallowed it his head felt clearer.  
  
“What time is it?”  
“About ten. I’ve firecalled your mother and told her you’ll be staying here tonight.”  
  
Ron stared at him.  
  
“I said you’d fallen asleep on the sofa and I didn’t want to wake you. She didn’t question me. Your secret is safe with me, Ron.”  
“I’m safe with you…”  
“You are.”  
  
Ron ate some more chocolate. “This is why it has to be you, Severus. Because you know me. You’ve seen and comforted me through my worst. I can’t see anyone else sitting through it; I can’t see anyone else wanting to love someone so fucked up.”  
“I beg to differ, but I do see where you’re coming from.” Severus shrugged.  
  
“It has to be you. And I think you know it has to be me for you too. Because I saved your life… and because I will be the only other person who will ever know the hell we went through.”  
  
He reached out for Severus’ maimed hand and took it. He raised it to his lips and kissed the pathetic stump of the little finger.  
“I did this,” he murmured against the skin. “I did this to you, for Godric’s sake, Severus, let me repay you.”  
“You saved my life, Ron. You owe me nothing.”  
“I owe you _everything_ ,” he choked. “All those days in the hospital. And all those nights in the cell when you thought I was asleep and you laid there and held me and stroked my hair even though you hated yourself for it.”  
  
Ron felt himself slipping again and slumped back into the pillows. He closed his eyes as the room spun around him; his chocolate threatened to make a reappearance.  
  
“All right.”  
The words were said so quietly that he nearly missed it. But once he heard them, they filled his mind without stopping.  
“All right?” he echoed.  
“All right. You win. I can’t fight this.”  
“Do you want to?”  
“I do. But I don’t think I’m strong enough to turn you away… and when you look like this, so broken, so vulnerable…”  
  
Severus shook his dark head and said nothing more. Ron drank his water and handed back first the glass, and then the chocolate. Then he patted the bed next to him and, seemingly without hesitation, Severus went to him. He climbed into the bed and moulded himself perfectly to Ron’s back.  
  
Ron fell asleep without thinking, without knowing.  
***  
In contrast to his last slow, dopey awakening, Ron sat bolt upright with his blood pumping and sweat dripping. Rodolphus. He could even smell the man as he sat there panting in the darkness. He could taste him. He could _feel_ him.  
  
“Ron?” Severus’ groggy voice from beside him made Ron jump. “Are you okay?”  
“Nightmare,” Ron muttered. He scrubbed his face with his hands.  
  
He fell down onto his back and blinked repeatedly, wondering why his eyes were so wet. He didn’t realise he was crying until something trickled into his ear and tickled. He wiped his eyes on the back of his hand but the tears simply returned.  
Severus moved closer to him, caught between concern and the need to sleep.  
  
“I willingly slept with a murderer,” Ron croaked. As if it was the first time he’d ever remembered it. It hurt so much more than it had before. “I…”  
“Shhh.” Severus kissed his temple and wrapped his arms tightly around Ron’s torso. “It’s all over now.”  
  
But it wasn’t, Ron knew. It was just beginning. He’d done mental illness and memory blocking psychosis. He’d done a bounce back and started recovery. Except, it wasn’t really recovery, because he’d been prevented from really thinking about his choices during and after their abduction.  
  
The road ahead seemed to have gained a few thousand more miles.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Ron murmured distractedly. “For waking you up.”  
  
Severus made a dismissive noise and nuzzled against him. Ron, distressed as he was, had no control over the tingles of pleasure which burst outwards from the point of contact or the way the blood rushed south to his groin.  
  
“Sleep,” Severus whispered to him.  
  
Ron tried his best to obey, to settle in the warm, comfortable bed and enjoy the sensation of sleeping with a man that he wasn’t terrified of – that he loved.  
  
It only served to remind him that the last time he’d been in bed with a man, he’d been expecting to die at any moment.  
As Severus’ breathing became even and deep behind him, Ron grew more and more awake. The longer he lay there in the dark, the thicker the panic and fear became within him.  
  
He didn’t know what was worse – everything which was coming back to him about Rodolphus Lestrange (which was large in volume and alarming in content) or the fact that he had no idea just how hard the fall was going to be.  
  
***  
“I thought you’d gone.”  
  
Ron couldn't miss the relief in Severus’ tone as he discovered him in the kitchen, standing at the cooker.  
  
“I couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d make breakfast.” Ron wiped his hands on a tea towel. “But it’s a bit shit and I burnt the bacon. And I think the eggs might still be raw. Sorry.”  
  
There was a pause before Ron found himself in a tight hug. He made to return it but Severus pulled away and looked at him.  
  
“How are you?” he asked delicately.  
“I’m fine,” Ron answered automatically.  
“You’re not,” Severus argued.  
  
Ron didn’t know how Severus knew that he wasn’t okay. That he felt as mad as a bag of cats in his mind and his gut was aching.  
  
“I’m not,” he conceded, looking down at his feet.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's trying so hard to be better, get better, make it better, that he misses the signs of something much more important.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: NC-17 for whole fic, PG-13 for this chapter  
> Content / Warnings: Story warnings: Dark!fic, EWE, Canon compliant to the end of DH but Snape didn't die, Resurgent fic; Chapter warnings: angst; mentioned kidnapping, torture, abuse, non-con, trauma.

Ron chewed with frustration at the inside of his cheek. Severus pulled away and leant back with a sigh, gently wiping his mouth with his hand.  
  
It wasn’t that Ron disliked kissing – far from it. Severus was far more dominant than any of the girls he’d kissed at school, and had far more finesse than Rodolphus could ever have dreamt of possessing. But there was a limit to how long kissing was a decent substitute for going further.  
  
Considering he was about three weeks beyond that point, Ron wasn’t surprised that the inside of his mouth was shredded to bits. He exhaled a huff of acceptance that they would get no further that evening.  
  
“Don’t,” Severus muttered.  
“Don’t what? Breathe?”  
“Look so fucking disappointed. I know, all right? I know.”  
  
“What do you know?” Ron turned, bringing his leg up beneath him and resting his elbow on the back of the sofa. He propped his head up on his hand.  
  
It was late and the hour showed in the soreness of his eyes and the perpetual yawn in his throat. He could have gone straight to bed once the shop closed; he could have taken his medication, stumbled up the stairs, fallen face-first into his pillows and not known anything about anything until he had to get up the next morning.  
  
Instead, he was sitting in Severus’ living room, being kissed a lot, touched slightly but on the whole not doing very much at all.  
It had been that way for weeks. Not for lack of trying on either of their parts, but rather as a result of the circumstance of their past.  
When it boiled down to it, Severus was too hindered by his fears of hurting Ron or pushing too far, and whenever their kissing _did_ progress, Ron was overcome with memories and fears, none of which were related to Severus.  
  
“I know that this is useless, the worst start we could have. I can’t touch you without wondering if I’m going to send you into a psychotic break and you can’t be touched without remembering the abuse you went through.”  
“Tell it like it is, eh?” Ron snorted but realised afterwards that it was a humourless sound, which he had not intended.  
  
Severus shot him a dark look and then turned his head away.  
  
“It’s just… hard.” Ron scratched his head. “I get that. I’m sorry it’s not easier.”  
“You shouldn’t apologise for things which aren’t your fault, Ron.”  
“Someone should.”  
“The only men who should be apologising are dead. No point stuffing words in the mouths of their corpses.”  
  
Ron made a face which he hoped conveyed that he agreed. “I hate that word. Corpse.”  
“Why?”  
“It just… it sounds like what it is. Death. Rot. Being soulless.”  
  
Severus didn’t comment further and Ron let his eyes close. He didn’t expect to fall asleep so quickly, but the next thing he knew, he was jerking awake in a darkened living room.  
  
A warm blanket slipped as he sat up, looking blearily around Severus’ sitting room. The man himself was nowhere to be seen; Ron guessed he had gone up to bed and not woken him.  
  
He lurched slightly as his feet took his weight and let out an exhausted yawn.  
  
Rather than conjure light to hurt his eyes, he groped his way out into the hallway and found the bannisters to help him climb the stairs. He accidentally kicked a step and swore to himself as he climbed, cursing his clumsiness, the darkness and the size of his stupid big feet. He moved quicker as he stepped into the light pooling on the floor from a landing window and continued to Severus’ bedroom.  
A single candle was on the point of going out, burnt low in the holder. Ron hastily wriggled out of his jeans and left them on the floor in favour of crawling quickly and silently into Severus’ bed.  
  
The kissing might have grown old and their ability to do anything else failed, but sleeping together was the one thing they could do well, it seemed. Severus was warm and Ron nearly moaned as the heat of the duvet settled around his body. He let out a breath of relief; the candle went out and plunged them back into darkness. Severus was on his front, face buried in a pillow, snoring slightly.  
Ron listened to the sound and realised it calmed him. Whilst it took him back to another dark room, a much less comfortable bed and fear, it reminded him of the time they’d spent together in a good way.  
  
It reminded him that some good had come of evil, but he still wasn’t sure at what cost. He didn’t know if he would ever let Severus fuck him without remembering the last person to have done so before that. He didn’t know if Severus could ever get past his anxiety to actually fuck him anyway.  
  
He started in shock when Severus’ arm flung over his middle and locked in place. A sleepy kiss was pressed into his shoulder. There was an indecipherable murmur and then more soft snores from his bed mate.  
  
Ron closed his eyes, hoping that sleep would come quickly. He didn’t want to think any more.  
  
***  
His lungs were screaming for oxygen and Ron doubled up.  
  
“Breathe,” Charlie instructed sternly. “How many times, Ron? You’ve got to remember to breathe!”  
  
Ron wafted a hand to tell him to shut up – Merlin only knew he didn’t have the spare breath to actually say it. He gulped at the air and hoped that his chest would stop burning.  
  
His time in the cell and then in hospital had ruined his stamina and physical health. There had only been one brother he could go to for help in clawing back some strength and fitness. Only one brother was mad enough to go jogging around country Devonshire lanes at six in the morning anyway.  
  
“Charlie…” the name came out as a desperate gasp.  
“It’s okay.” His brother’s voice softened and a hand came to rest on Ron’s lower back. “Here. Water.”  
  
Ron snatched it off him and threw his head back, desperate for some hydration. Sparks flew against the darkness of his closed eyelids and he wondered if it would ever get better.  
  
“Keep moving,” Charlie advised. “Just slowly walk around. You need to stop your heart rate from plummeting to the point where you feel like you’re going to pass out. Trust me.”  
  
Ron managed to follow him as Charlie started off along the lane. Birds were tweeting a tuneful accompaniment to Ron’s struggle of putting one foot in front of the other.  
  
“Feeling better yet? Drink more water if you can, but don’t make yourself sick.”  
  
Nodding, Ron tried to ignore the wheeze in his breath.  
  
“Getting there?” Charlie asked encouragingly. Ron nodded again. “Good. Speed up a bit. Keep pace with me. You can do it.”  
  
Some mornings they ran. Sometimes Charlie transfigured things into weights for him and then talked him through repetitions. Ron hated those days – struggling through the sessions only to spend the rest of the day in pain as his muscles grew and strengthened. It was only because he was _so_ weak that it hurt so much.  
  
“There. Perfect.” Charlie gave him a smile as Ron broke even with him at a normal walking pace. “But no more running today. We walk home. Your mug was an awful colour.”  
“I _felt_ an awful colour.”  
  
Charlie laughed and took the ever-filling water bottle off him, swigging a whole bottle down in two gulps. Ron looked at him with envy – at the thick muscles supporting his brother’s throat, at the healthy hair thrown back off his face and falling over his shoulders. Charlie was a picture of health and strength, everything that Ron was not. Jealousy curdled in his stomach.  
  
“Like what you see?” Charlie grinned, waggling his eyebrows. “You wouldn’t be the first bloke to eye this temple up.” He gestured to his body.  
  
On anyone else the act would have been an unpalatable display of ego and arrogance. But Charlie’s eyes were bright with laughter and he wore an expression of over-the-top seediness. Ron laughed and surprised himself.  
  
“Thass ma boy,” Charlie cried happily. He clapped Ron on the shoulder. “Every day, you’re getting better. It just takes time.”  
“Especially when you start off so fucking weedy.”  
“You say weedy, I see a waist measurement which I can never dream of having.”  
“Would you want it?”  
“Nobody’s happy with their own body.” Charlie shrugged. “Sometimes I see you, Bill and Perce… all tall and willowy. Graceful. I could never be like that.”  
  
Ron thought about kicking his big toe painfully into Severus’ stairs two days before. “I’m not graceful.”  
“You’re a fucking ballerina compared to me.”  
  
They kept up their good natured play until they rounded the corner into the village which, so early in the morning, was quiet except for the muted sounds of the shops coming to life behind still-closed doors. A waft of the scent of baking bread floated past them and they both inhaled.  
  
“Let’s get out of here before I break down their door,” Charlie suggested.  
  
Ron thought he heard his brother’s stomach rumble. He nodded and they kept on, passing the old war memorial and the church. Even though Ottery St Catchpole was a largely magical dwelling, it still bore the marks of Muggle life in the monument to the dead and the religious building which was hardly ever used.  
  
Occasionally wizarding couples used it to get married in. Ron had seen them in his youth, observing their radiant joy with awe in a way that only children can. It had seemed so terribly adult.  
  
“It’s too early to be concentrating that hard,” Charlie commented, nudging him with his shoulder. “Anything you want to talk about?”  
“Why aren’t you married?”  
  
Ron made a face at his horrible blurting of the question. Charlie just laughed.  
  
“And all before seven in the morning. Wow.”  
“Sorry.” Ron blushed and looked down at the lane as they came out on the other side of the tiny village.  
  
Charlie sniffed and scratched at his head. “I’ve not met the rest person yet. I’m not interested. I’m happy single?”  
  
“Any more set answers?”  
“I’m concentrating on my career.”  
  
Their laughter was loud and bawdy as it raced along in front of them.  
  
“I dunno. Just… a mix of things. And I don’t know if marriage is for me. I’m not particularly good at maintaining relationships, and I think I left my only chance in Romania.”  
“Oh?”  
“Yeah. We’ve been on and off more times than a tart’s knickers.”  
“How do you know what a tart’s knickers do?”  
  
Charlie snorted and didn’t answer. Ron grinned to himself as they walked.  
  
“Things are really weird with Severus.” He looked out between the trees which bordered the road. “I don’t know how to fix it.”  
“Maybe you can’t fix it. Maybe it doesn’t have to be fixed. Maybe it needs to just be for a bit, y’know?”  
“I guess…” Ron shook his head. “I don’t think he’s happy.”  
“Are you happy?”  
“I want to be.”  
  
Charlie nudged him again and sighed. “You’ll get there, Ron. You’ve been through hell. Give yourself, and him, some credit, eh? Things will be tough for a while. But it’ll pass. And then hopefully you’ll find yourselves being able to enjoy life without all the shit you’ve been through overshadowing it.”  
  
“Do you think it’s weird… that he’s so much older than me? Nobody’s saying anything but I get the feeling they want to.”  
“It’s not exactly the norm…” Charlie shrugged. “But some bonds you can’t ignore. And some connections you can’t ignore either. And they don’t necessarily happen with someone the exact same age as you. As long as you’re okay with it, Ron, then I am. And anybody who doesn’t have the same philosophy… then they’ve not got your best interests and happiness at heart. Promise me you’ll remember that?”  
  
Ron nodded and coughed away the pang of emotion which hurt his throat.  
  
“Last one to the front door makes breakfast,” Charlie declared and took off.  
  
Ron felt wonderfully free as he sprang into action, stretching his legs out as far as he could and breaking even with his fitter, older brother.  
  
“Short arse,” he called over his shoulder, and ran on.  
***  
Ron hurled his wand at the wall with a shout of frustration and buried his face in his hands as he landed on the floor. He breathed every bit as heavily as he had whilst running with Charlie that morning.  
  
“This was stupid. I shouldn’t do both magic and fitness in one day.”  
“You’re tired,” Hermione said gently. “Normally it’s not such hard work. But we’ve upped the spell difficulty too, so it’s not surprising that you’re struggling.”  
“Struggling? I’m shit,” Ron grumped. “Shitter than I was before I got abducted.”  
  
He fiddled with the hem of his jeans.  
  
“You’re not shit, Ron.”  
“I can’t even summon, Hermione. That’s one of the very first things we learnt at Hogwarts. I have the magical ability of a first year. That’s so… fucking embarrassing.” His voice was a mutter by the end and he thought he might have been able to fry eggs on the heat in his cheeks.  
“You were very ill. I did some reading about it and it’s not uncommon for wizards to completely lose their magical power after such a mental trauma. It’s amazing that you can do as much as you can.”  
  
Ron didn’t have the energy to argue with her out loud, but his mind kept up a mental barrage of insults about himself. Hermione sighed and put her hand on his knee.  
  
The touch was warm but Ron felt nothing more from it. He looked at her dainty, pale hand. He’d enjoyed holding it in the past.  
  
“You’ve got to cut yourself some slack, Ron. You’re putting so much pressure on yourself.”  
“You would do this, if you were me. You’d want to sort it, to make yourself right again. That’s all I want, Hermione, I want to be right again!”  
  
He swallowed against the squeak which rose in his tone at the end. He looked away so that she wouldn’t see the dampness of his eyes. Suddenly she was close, wrapping her arm around his shoulders and resting her chin on one.  
  
“Don’t do this to yourself, Ron… you’ll only make it worse by forcing yourself to try so hard when you’re not ready for it yet.”  
“I know. But it feels like I have to, because nothing’s right and I hate it and…”  
  
Hermione shushed him and kissed his temple. Ron wanted to feel some tension, to feel comforted by her affection. He did, to some extent – but nothing more than what he felt with Harry or one of his brothers. Friendship -- _family_. He pulled away and looked at Hermione. Her eyes were red.  
  
“I wish I could blame you. Hate you. Feel anything but love for you.” She sniffed. “But what happened wasn’t your fault and I can’t… I can’t blame you, Ron.”  
  
Swallowing, Ron wished she’d not said anything. Her words had made his skin prickle with discomfort. “You say you can’t blame me… but Hermione, you _should_ blame me. Maybe not for all of it but my choices were my own.”  
“You were under so much pressure-“  
“I was, but that wasn’t the whole story, Hermione. I made a lot of choices which I’m having to come to terms with now… and I wish everyone else would, too.”  
  
Hermione opened her mouth, presumably to continue attempting to absolve him of all the blame for what the past year had held for them.  
  
“If it makes you feel better that I’m staying with Severus because you think it’s the result of abuse and brainwashing, then fine. I want you to feel better. I want you to move on. But it’s not the truth, at least not to me.”  
“You’re not thinking clearly about the whole thing yet. You’re not properly well yet.”  
“So I’m with him because I’m still mental?”  
“No, but-“  
  
Ron jumped to his feet as fast as his aching muscles and joints would allow. He retrieved his wand from the skirting board and pocketed it. Hermione was looking up at him with doleful eyes and a worried expression.  
  
“I’m fine,” Ron said forcefully. He saw a few specks of spit fly through the air. “Or I will be.”  
“I know you will be.” Hermione got to her feet too and folded her arms over her chest. “I just hate that it won’t be with me… and that you’re taking the blame for all of this on yourself.”  
“I’m not. I’m not saying it was my fault I got taken. I’m just saying that you don’t know what it was like… and the decisions I made were mine. Yeah, they might have been made under pressure but you could say that of the whole fucking war. Your decision to wipe your parents’ memories. Would you have done that if you’d not been in the situation you were in?”  
  
She looked down at her feet. “No.”  
“Exactly.”  
“You’ve just changed so much.”  
“Something like that changes someone.” Ron shrugged.  
  
They stared awkwardly at one another. Ron gave up after a while and turned to leave.  
  
***  
“Today has been really fucking long,” Ron moaned, scrubbing his face with his fingers.  
  
When he emerged he blinked away the bleariness in his vision and peered up at Severus, who was holding a glass of wine outstretched.  
  
“Yes. Booze. That’s the way forward.” Ron accepted it and took a big gulp.  
  
He wasn’t really a fan of wine, but it was all Severus had in the house, and so he’d drink it. It was spicy and odd-feeling on his tongue.  
  
“Better?” Severus asked quietly.  
“Much. It smells great in here. What are you making?”  
“Some form of pastry encased concoction which is supposed to be a steak and ale pie but I’m not particularly sure that the description applies, because I ignored the recipe completely.”  
“You, the Great Potions Master, ignoring the instructions?” Ron snorted and sipped his wine again. “All my illusions are shattered.”  
  
Severus let out a huff of relief as he sat down. Ron looked at him closely for the first time since his arrival. He looked wiped out.  
  
“Don’t think for one minute I believe that you had any illusions about me,” he muttered, nursing his own glass. “I know you hated me. I know you smiled when you thought I’d died.”  
“Wow, that’s deep. And harsh.” Ron frowned. “If we’re going to continue to pull on that thread, you used to rip into me in front of everyone whenever you got the chance. Normally when Harry wasn’t there. So don’t give me any bullshit about not liking you – you were never a very likeable person. And definitely _not_ a likeable teacher.”  
  
Ron finished with his eyebrows raised, daring Severus to go further. He was too tired for an argument, but he refused to allow Severus’ natural inclination for spitefulness and venom to go unchallenged.  
  
“I was not there to be liked. I was there to teach. And protect.”  
“And I wasn’t there to be an angel. I was there to finally get some form of life. Nobody’s nice when they’re a teenager.”  
“You’re still a teenager,” Severus pointed out with a quirk of a smile about his mouth.  
  
Ron scowled at him and drank wine until he hit the bottom of the glass.  
  
“I was a foul teenager,” Severus said, sounding morose. “A foul child, a foul teenager, a foul young adult and a fully-fledged vicious recluse by the time I was thirty.”  
“And you still have your days,” Ron muttered with a conceding shrug.  
“But I am trying to be a better person. For you.”  
  
It sobered Ron slightly to hear that, wiping away all the cheek which had been coming naturally to his lips. He felt humbled that Severus would try to improve – for him.  
  
“I’m cooking. I’m nurturing. I’m thinking about someone else’s needs and emotional comfort. Really, you don’t know the amount of effort that’s going into keeping you.”  
“Like some pampered Quidditch-wife witch?” Ron laughed at the very thought. “Oh, Severus, I’ve run out of money for some more robes I don’t need.”  
  
Severus’ laugh was dark and long. Ron waited until he’d finished before leaning forward and kissing him. He’d aimed for the lips but missed and got the corner of his mouth.  
  
“You look so tired,” Severus said softly, reaching up to touch the knuckles of his fingers to Ron’s cheek.  
“You don’t look so good yourself.”  
“Just tired.”  
  
Ron kissed him again, creeping his hands around Severus’ torso until they found suitable places to hold on to. Severus kissed him in return until both of them began to feel short of breath. Ron felt the day’s workouts in his lungs and regretted both completely.  
  
“I’m doing too much,” he admitted finally, pressing his face into Severus’ throat.  
“And the final horse crosses the finish line,” Severus responded dryly.  
  
Ron thought about replying with something equally biting but decided against at. He leant into Severus’ warmth and weight and revelled in the comforting joy that it brought.  
  
Severus’ fingers played over Ron’s head for a moment before sinking into his hair and beginning to massage. Ron moaned and let his head roll back.  
  
“So good.”  
“Your scalp is so tense.”  
“Are you really surprised?” Ron made a face. “I’m tense in general.”  
“You should let me see to that.”  
“You can see to it right now if you want.”  
“Oh really?”  
“Uh-huh.”  
  
Ron held his breath, wondering how Severus would respond. If they might actually get further than a kiss and a cuddle.  
“Well then… why don’t I top up our wine and we can… see what happens?”  
“I think that’s a great idea.”  
  
He handed his glass to Severus as he stood up.  
  
“Careful,” Ron chided, as Severus wobbled slightly. “Here, let me get the wine.”  
“No, you’ll spill it everywhere like last time. Messy child.”  
  
Ron had no response – it was an accurate description.  
  
“Then be quick, eh? I’m all yours. And I’m waiting.”  
  
He immediately hated himself for attempting to be enticing. Severus raised his eyebrows before turning on his heel. Ron felt woefully inadequate and impossibly unattractive as his face flamed red and he cringed.  
  
 _Idiot. Don’t try to be sexy. You’re not sexy and never will be._  
  
“Such a pretty boy when you blush,” Severus teased, having stuck his head back into the living room.  
“Oh fuck off!” Ron cried, mortified.  
  
He heard a deep chuckle with Severus’ footsteps to the kitchen.  
  
Ron arched his back and stretched, feeling every minute of his morning run with Charlie in his bones. He was tired and had actually been looking forward to their new kiss, cuddle and bed routine. But he wasn’t going to knock it if Severus was willing to go further.  
The thought put a smile on his face and he folded his arms over his chest to wait.  
  
He jumped as a loud smash rang out from the kitchen.  
  
“Severus?”  
  
The lack of an answer propelled him out of his seat and into the hallway.  
  
“Severus? Are you okay?”  
  
He skidded into the kitchen, his socks finding no traction on the tiled floor.  
  
Blood. There was blood everywhere. Panic took hold of him.  
  
He ran forward to where Severus was lying on the floor, surrounded by sprawling redness. His feet made splashing sounds. There was no blood, only spilt wine. The shattered bottle was under one of Severus’ limp hands.  
  
“Severus.” Ron crouched over him, grabbing his shoulders and shaking them. “Severus!”  
  
The older wizard was limp. Sweat beaded on his pale brow, which Ron now saw as a warning sign he had missed. Severus had not just been tired – something was very wrong.  
  
Cupping his hand over Severus’ mouth, Ron waited for a tickle of breath against his palm. He started to shake as none came.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keeping watch is a lonely business.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content / Warnings: Story warnings: Dark!fic, EWE, Canon compliant to the end of DH but Snape didn't die, Resurgent fic; Chapter warnings: angst; mentioned kidnapping, torture, abuse, non-con, trauma.

His head was thumping. He could see the headache in his eyes, throbbing along with his pulse. The flickering candles didn’t help. Ron tightened his grip on Severus’ cool hand and dug his elbows further into the hospital blankets and mattress.  
  
There had been no change since they’d arrived at the hospital; for five hours he’d sat sentry by the bed, refusing to let go of Severus. It was the early hours of the morning and they were currently alone. Medical staff had been in and out monitoring the charms and his vital signs. Ron had been watching wide-eyed and numb. He couldn’t get the sight of the red wine over the kitchen floor like blood out of his head. It had awoken something in him, triggering and dangerous. He was only holding onto Severus’ hand so tightly to stop his own from shaking.  
  
There had been no relief when Severus had suddenly breathed against his palm, only more fear. He’d managed to get them to St Mungo’s but he didn’t remember how. His mind was at once both gloriously blank and filled with terror.  
  
It wasn’t perhaps the sight of the blood wine, but the person lying still within it which had shocked him so much. More than anything, Ron knew that he had been right. His own survival was tied to the wizard lying in the bed in front of him.  
  
“You have to wake up.” Ron muttered the words. He wanted nobody but Severus to hear them. “If you don’t wake up, I’ll lose it again. I’ll never be right again. I _need_ you.”  
  
He scrutinised Severus’ face, desperately hoping to see movement, a muscle twitch – anything which would indicate that his world wasn’t about to be turned upside down all over again.  
  
It was his heart, apparently. Due to the fact that their furthered relationship hadn’t really been detailed properly to the press, the Healers would tell him no more because he wasn’t family or next of kin. On pointing out that there was no family or next of kin, he got nowhere. He suspected it was his age keeping him in the dark. Only nineteen. The Healers were giving him odd looks when they walked in and saw him gripping Severus’ hand. Ron wasn’t about to waste time explaining the complexities of what they had to people who likely wouldn’t understand.  
  
 _None of their business anyway…_  
  
Ron inhaled and as he did so straightened his spine. It responded by aching and sending a dull pain right up into the base of his skull. He’d been sat still for a very long time. As if keen to join in the party, his joints proved stiff as he tried to stretch without releasing Severus’ hand. Eventually he sighed and laid it down on the bed before getting to his feet and properly elongating his body.  
  
He ignored the pops and cracks which pinged out. He cracked his knuckles above his head and yawned. He was so tired and the medication was working against him, trying to lull him to sleep whilst his head fought to stay awake. It was the first time he’d ever successfully managed to stay awake after taking it. The thought scared him. Was the medication less efficient, or was he getting stronger?  
  
The door opened and derailed his train of thought. A junior healer gave him a weak smile and went to the other side of the bed, holding her wand out ready to check the charms and monitors. Ron watched her intently until she looked at him again, blushing pink under his attention.  
  
“Sorry,” he murmured, starting to redden himself.  
“Not to worry.” She jotted something down on her clipboard. “You’ve been in here for hours. Is there someone we could call? Why don’t you go and get yourself a cup of tea from the canteen? It’ll have just opened again.”  
“I can’t leave him.” Ron shook his head and folded his arms over his chest. “I don’t want him to be on his own.”  
“He’s under quite deeply, Mr Weasley. He won’t notice that you’ve given yourself a rest.”  
  
Her tone was kind but she had irked Ron by implying that Severus didn’t know he was even there, despite the fact that he had realised that by himself several hours earlier. And it bothered him even more that she’d suggested firecalling his family, which he’d been putting off ever since they arrived at the hospital.  
  
However much he hated her suggestions, standing up had forced his bladder to point out its fullness. He remembered the wine they’d drunk. The wine they were planning to take to the bedroom with them.  
  
 _So close._  
  
“Will you stay with him… while I go to the loo? And get something to drink?”  
“I can do that.” The witch smiled at him. “I promise, I’ll stay right here.”  
  
Ron nodded. He couldn’t thank her aloud; his throat was too thick with emotion. But he forced himself to leave the room, gently closing the door behind him. The corridor was brighter and stung his eyes, but he took himself first through the corridors to the visitor toilets, and then into a lift to take him up to the hospital canteen. It whirred and clanked around him, a square, brass-plated tomb lifting him through the floors of St Mungo’s to the very top. He gladly hurried out of it. He wasn’t sure whether it was being so tall, but lifts made his insides quake.  
  
The canteen was practically empty so early on in the morning, but there was a witch behind the till in an apron serving another customer and some weary looking hospital visitors choosing breakfast from the hot trolley. Everyone in the room looked shattered and that immediately endeared them to Ron. He headed straight for the jugs of tea and coffee set out. He hated coffee, the taste made him shudder, but he needed it to stay awake. He tugged a disposable cup out of a stack and sloshed the dark, steaming liquid into it. He added milk and an insane amount of sugar before stirring.  
  
Ron paid the witch at the till, who smiled and thanked him in a northern accent. She called him duck at the end but he wordlessly walked away, putting his cup to his lips and blowing on the drink. He wanted to get back to Severus, because the healer wasn’t a suitable replacement. If Severus woke up and he wasn’t there, Ron wondered, how would he react?  
  
 _You want him to need you as much as you need him…_ The voice in his mind was snide and cocky. Ron hated that it spoke the truth.  
A kerfuffle at the end of the corridor nearly made him slop coffee down his front. He looked up and his blood went cold. He would recognise the coiffed blonde curls, elaborate glasses and crocodile skin handbag anywhere. He didn’t need to look at the accompanying photographer to know that he’d stumbled across Rita Skeeter and her dreaded Quick-Quotes Quill. Ron immediately turned away and almost broke into a run, but it was too late.  
  
“Ron Weasley!” Her voice was every bit as annoying as he remembered. His skin started to creep. He’d not forgiven her for giving him away when he’d been in Benjy’s.  
  
 _Don’t think about that. Nope. No. **No.**_  
  
“What on earth are you doing skulking around the corridors of St Mungo’s at three in the morning?” Rita asked, her lips curled into a dangerous smile. “I think you’ll find psychiatric care a few floors south, dear.”  
  
Ron bit his tongue.  
  
“Here for a little top-up therapy, are we?” she needled. “Perhaps a little extended stay to prevent another admission to the loony bin?”  
A flash blinded him, leaving him blinking dumbly in her direction. When she came back into focus, her smirk was fully established and her eyes were narrowed.  
  
“Tell me, I want to know. What’s it like to be totally gaga? You know…” she tapped her temple. “In here.”  
  
When he failed to answer her again, a crease appeared in between her brows. Her quill was floating mid-air and scratching into a notebook. Ron had the sudden urge to snatch it out of the air and snap it before stabbing her with it.  
  
 _Merlin’s cock don’t let her get wind of that._  
  
“Kneazle got your tongue?” she taunted, shifting her weight to the other hip. “I wonder if you’re safe to be wandering the corridors? If you’ve given your healers the slip… perhaps I should raise the alarm?”  
  
Again he ignored her, wondering why he wasn’t already walking away.  
  
“I can’t wait to hand this over to my editor in the morning,” Rita said conversationally to her photographer. “Should bring me a nice little bonus. I need a new handbag.”  
  
Even though she wasn’t speaking to him, she’d finally reached a point which spurred Ron into further anger.  
  
“I’m not here for me,” he ground out. “Why don’t you sod off and stop bothering people who already have enough to deal with, eh?”  
  
Her laugh was the final straw. Something within Ron snapped – he felt it so acutely that it was similar to the anger he’d expressed in his psychosis on escaping the Death Eaters. The memory floored him, something he’d hitherto been unable to remember. But now it was there, raw and visceral, pounding through him. Magic tingled in his arms.  
  
“Fuck off,” he spat. “Just fuck off, lady. You know nothing. You haven’t got a fucking sympathetic bone in your body, have you? It’s just all venom.”  
  
“Such language.” Her mock offence irritated Ron beyond reason. “You should be ashamed of yourself, young man.”  
  
“Me?!” Ron heard his voice bellowing down the corridor. Several cautious heads poked out of the canteen. “I should be fucking ashamed? You. You should be fucking ashamed. You’re a fucking miserable excuse of a human being. Leave me alone!”  
“Why are you here? Anger management?”  
“Because my partner might die!”  
  
It took Ron a moment to realise that it was not his bellowing which momentarily stunned Rita into silence. It was what he had said.  
Before she could open her mouth, he turned tail and fled, not caring that hot coffee spilt over his fingers as he ran to the lift and pummelled the button. He felt sick, desperately willing the doors to close off the flashes which had started to come from the photographer’s camera again.  
  
“Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit.”  
  
***  
“Where do they think I am?” Ron asked tentatively.  
  
“Still at Severus’. I made something up after you sent your Patronus.” Charlie rubbed his chin and leant back in his chair. “They’re none the wiser.”  
  
“They will be when Rita goes to print with her bloody article.”  
“Well, then you’ll be a bit more prepared to deal with them, won’t you?”  
  
Ron had been desperate after returning to Severus’ hospital room in such a state that the healers had given him a calming draught and tried to put him into a bed of his own. At the last minute, he’d decided to Patronus the one member of his family that he could trust not to go overboard and waited for him to turn up, which Charlie had done quickly and without hesitation. He’d been there for Ron ever since and Ron wasn’t letting him go.  
  
He had no desire to add to the family pile any further, however. Luckily Charlie understood that.  
  
“I can’t believe that hag is still hanging around. I’ve never forgiven her for what she called Bill that time.”  
“But you’ve been calling Bill a ‘long-haired pillock’ since he decided to stop cutting his hair.”  
“Well _I’m_ allowed to insult him,” Charlie said. “But she’s not. Vapid bitch.”  
  
Ron didn’t have the energy to laugh at the joke. He pulled the blanket he’d been given tighter around his shoulders and looked at Severus, still asleep on the bed.  
  
The healers had assured him that the time of danger had passed, but Ron couldn’t calm his worries or stop his stomach from somersaulting. He was still terrified. Charlie couldn’t put him totally at ease.  
  
“You look shattered.”  
“I am.”  
“Then get some kip. I’m here, not going anywhere. I won’t let anyone but hospital staff through that door and I’ll wake you if he even so much as snores. I promise you.”  
“I don’t think I can.”  
“Try.”  
“I don’t want-“  
  
“Ron.” Charlie leant forward, his expression serious and weary. “You need to sleep. When you first got ill, you didn’t sleep for days. You wouldn’t allow yourself to be medicated and they couldn’t force you until a certain amount of time had passed. I never want to see your skin that shade of grey again. I never even wanted to see bags under your eyes again and they’re there, staring me in the face and reminding me of the fact that we so nearly lost you. Please. Just try and sleep, for me."  
  
The pleading edge in Charlie’s voice made him feel both incredibly loved and impossibly guilty. Every day there seemed to be a different reminder of what he’d put his family through by disappearing and then becoming locked in his own mind. _I’m so fucking selfish._  
  
“I’ll try,” he whispered.  
  
He got to his feet, taking the blanket with him, over to the low camp bed the hospital staff had produced when they realised he would not willingly leave the hospital. He sank down on it and kicked his shoes off before lying down on his side and bringing his feet up.  
He closed his eyes to keep Charlie happy, even though he couldn’t imagine falling asleep.  
  
***  
If he was hungry, Ron didn’t know it. He drank whatever anyone pushed into his hand, but he had no appetite. His mouth and throat were dry despite the hydration. The smell of food even made him feel nauseous.  
  
Everyone was furious with him. He didn’t care.  
  
Two days had passed since the evening that Severus had collapsed. When the story broke in the Prophet, Ron had had no choice but to send Charlie back to The Burrow to explain everything that had happened. He’d sat and anxiously awaited the influx but in the end only his parents and Harry had arrived. Harry had been furious that Ron hadn’t contacted him; his parents, if upset, hid it well.  
  
But everyone’s tempers had started to fray, because Ron wouldn’t eat and because he refused point blank to leave the hospital.  
Severus had woken several times, but he’d never been lucid. As time wore on he had become distressed on waking, causing the healers to place him into a magically induced slumber which didn’t happen in fits and starts. Some colour had returned to his cheeks and lips. He no longer looked dead. It still wasn’t enough for Ron to feel confident to leave him, though.  
  
“Do you think you could manage a bit of cake?” his mother wheedled suddenly, her voice bright and cheerful, as though cake solved all the problems in the world. “I think I could do with a bit of cake. Shall I go and get some?”  
“If you want.” Ron tried to inject some charisma into his reply, but knew he sounded flatter than a pancake. “I’m not fussed.”  
  
There was a loud sigh and he looked up in time to catch his mother sharing an exasperated glance with Harry.  
  
“Ron, don’t you think this is getting rather silly now?” his mother asked delicately, tilting her head to one side to give the impression that she was still sympathetic.  
  
Ron knew differently. As usual, his family thought he was deaf when only a door separated them.  
  
“No, not particularly,” he muttered.  
  
“It’s just…” Harry took over. “You look a state, Ron. And you stink. You’ve not eaten in days. Seen proper daylight in days.”  
“So?” Ron chewed on his thumbnail for something to do and detract from how bloody awkward his family were making things.  
  
“We think you should come home for a bit. Get out of the hospital. Severus is asleep, he won’t notice you’re gone.”  
“How do you know?” he argued. “He might know I’m here.”  
“He doesn’t, you heard that the healers heave induced a rest which is impenetrable by outside sources. To make him properly rest.”  
“So?”  
  
His mother let out a huff he’d heard a thousand times before – the huff which said she was barely clinging on to her temper and was liable to lose it at any given time.  
  
The only difference was that Ron’s own temper was completely shattered. His fuse was non-existent. If his mother wanted to fight, he’d fight, and she would definitely not like what he had to say.  
  
 _Maybe she’ll shut the fuck up if she hears it._  
  
“We’re concerned,” she said curtly.  
“Good, you should be. About him, not me.”  
“We’re very concerned about you.”  
“Thanks, but I don’t need your concern.”  
“Ron.” Harry caught his eye and gave a tiny shake of his head.  
“This is stupid.” Ron shrugged. “I’m not leaving. But you can if this isn’t fun enough for you. You know where the door is.”  
“Ron!”  
  
There it was; she had cracked. His name screeched through the room like whip cracking. Ron shuddered a bit – remembering how he had memorised the sound of the whips and items which Rodolphus had allowed his followers to use on him before his fake defection.  
  
“You’re coming home with me _right now._ I won’t have you ill again at this expense.”  
“Harry, please tell my mum to shut up and stop interfering.”  
  
There was a pregnant pause and Ron looked Harry straight in the eye.  
  
“I agree with her, mate.” Harry shifted uncomfortably in his chair and blushed. “You’ve got to look after yourself.”  
  
As had happened with Rita, Ron felt something in him break at Harry’s lack of support.  
  
“Both of you can just fuck off. I didn’t ask you to come here and I didn’t ask you for your opinions. Get out.”  
“Ron, be reasonable.”  
“I am being reasonable, you’re the ones that are being totally unfair here.”  
“Can’t you understand our concern?”  
  
“As it goes, no, I can’t. What’s it to you if I stay in this room forever, sitting by his bedside? What else should I be doing? Going out, living life, having _fun_? I’m sorry to point it out, but I’m not very fun myself these days. I’d rather be here and I’m not leaving."  
  
“But that’s it!” his mother got to her feet. “You’re here. Your sanity is tied to a man whom, the entire family agrees, is not appropriate for you to spend so much time with. It’s not healthy.”  
  
Reeling, Ron kept quiet for a moment, his mind racing ahead with all sorts of insults and anger.  
  
Eventually, when he thought he could deliver it without screaming, he said, “You were fine with this sort of vigil when it was the other way round – him never leaving me. You were happy enough to use him to get me back.”  
  
“It’s not the same, Ron. He was our only option. There was nothing else, it had all failed. And he left Benjy’s. He didn’t guard you day and night.”  
“Well, tough shit. This is how it’s going to happen. If you don’t like it, you can leave and never have to look at it again, if you don’t want. I mean it, mum. Drop it. If you want to stay in my life, drop it.”  
  
It occurred to him then that his words were melodramatic, but he couldn’t bring himself to particularly care about it. It was how he felt, standing there with the pair of them gawping at him as if he’d grown another head.  
  
“I don’t like how your ability to function seems to be tied to him,” his mum said ruefully. “You can’t stay here, Ron.”  
  
“I _am_ staying here,” he said forcefully. “And before you have a go, just think of it this way.” He paused for breath, sucking fire and gumption into his belly. “This whole thing happened because of circumstance. It happened because Rodolphus Lestrange captured us to get to _you_.” He locked eyes on Harry. “You were his target. Severus and I were just pawns in a bloody sick game to get you in the hands of the enemy, or killed in a rescue attempt.” Harry opened his mouth to respond but Ron went on, switching his gaze to his mother. “And you. You killed Rodolphus’ wife. She might have been batshit, she might have been a fucking female incarnation of the devil himself, but he _loved_ her. Like you love dad. Like I love him.” He jerked his head at Severus. “And because you killed her, he took every bit of anger and terror and injustice out on me. He let them rape me and beat me and strip me so completely that I lost my mind for months. Because you killed his wife.”  
  
He knew his words were upsetting – they were hurting _him_ as he spat them out – but he couldn’t stop.  
  
“So if you can’t take watching me be here for him, then fine. But I don’t want your opinions. I don’t care if you don’t like it. But that’s why I have to stay, because none of this was supposed to happen. It wouldn’t have happened, either at all or as badly, if either of you had been different. So forgive me if I can’t stomach standing here listening to you tell me why I should leave him here, all alone, and come home with you. He was there for me when you weren’t, he went through something with me I’d never want you to go through. But it happened. I’ve accepted it, I’ve lived it for fuck’s sake. I’m sorry if you can’t deal with it. I never asked you to. So just go. Go home. I don’t need you.”  
  
His aching throat begged to differ, but Ron would be dead before he admitted it.  
  
***  
Chin on his forearms, Ron sniffed miserably to himself. The crying came on whenever he had too long to think. He hated it. It made him look and feel weak, and he felt weak enough. Harry and his mum had left the hospital room silently, looking afraid and even more worried.  
  
Ron understood why they’d not said anything – he wouldn’t have crossed him either if their situations were reversed, but he was stung by their silence. That they’d not fought to support him. They’d just gone.  
  
And he’d been in the hospital so long that his clothes stank of it; he so desperately wanted Severus to wake up so that he wouldn’t be alone. He wanted a shower, to change his clothes and to sink into a soft bed. His body was so painful he felt as though he’d relieved some of the more horrific parts of his captivity. Speaking about it had made parts of him throb with phantom pain. The agony of the first time one of them had raped him kept coming back in rolling waves. He’d hoped his mind had properly buried it and that he would never, ever remember.  
  
“You’re not that lucky,” he muttered to himself.  
  
“I think you’re very lucky, actually.”  
  
He didn’t recognise the speaker. Rather, he did recognise him, but he was utterly baffled by their presence. He sat up and looked around the hospital room. He started when he located the source.  
  
He’d paid no attention whatsoever to the portrait which hung on the far wall. It was of an empty chair and a table with a bowl of fruit on it. Now that it had an occupant, his foolishness slapped him around the head.  
  
“Ronald Weasley.” Albus Dumbledore’s voice was soft; his eyes and mouth were smiling. “I’ve been waiting for a chance to tell you how proud I am of you.”  
“Of m-me?” Ron stammered.  
  
“Of you.” Dumbledore eased into the chair. “You’ve been through quite something, I hear.”  
“You could say that.” Ron nervously smoothed his palms over his thighs. “Sort of.”  
“I just wanted to pop in and check on Severus. My sources have been keeping me updated but I thought it was time I’d come and see him myself…”  
  
“He’s still asleep.” Ron looked to his left and made sure that Severus’ chest was still rising and falling. “They put him under for his own good.”  
  
“There were many times that I wanted to do the same.”  
“Before or after you sent him to his death in your service?”  
  
The sharp rebuke surprised him. Ron had no idea where it had come from. He’d never even really _thought_ about Severus’ role in the war and the fact that Dumbledore had set him up just as he’d set Harry up for death.  
  
“Actually, could you leave us alone?” he asked, his tone dull. “I want to be alone with him.”  
“I’m sure you do. But might I just say one thing further?”  
  
Ron waited but didn’t look back at the portrait.  
  
“Everything you are feeling and going through is a result of circumstance.”  
“Were you eavesdropping earlier?”  
“Alas, I can no longer use your brothers’ remarkable extendable ears to do so.”  
  
Something raw twanged in Ron’s belly at the thought of Fred, dead in the war orchestrated by the dead wizard in the painting.  
  
“No. I just wanted to let you know that sometimes, the darkest of times can bring joy. That you can find yourself within it and use that knowledge for good when the light comes. Do not let anything or anyone – including Severus himself – stop you from revelling in it.”  
“I don’t intend to.” Ron dropped his eyes to the blankets. “I’m not going to walk away from this. Him. I won’t walk away.”  
  
“Good. Because I did, and I haven’t yet forgiven myself. Everyone has walked away from Severus and it’s high time someone stuck. Like glue. To save him from himself.”  
“Right.”  
“And I know that person is you.”  
  
“Oh come off it.” Ron scoffed. “You couldn’t have known this.”  
“No. But I still know my own eyes, Ron. The things you bravely said to your mother earlier-”  
“I knew you must have been listening!”  
  
There was deep chuckle. “You are a very brave young man, Ron. You have stood by Harry and supported him through a war… and now I need to you be strong and do it again with Severus.”  
  
“There’s no war.”  
“Severus himself will be a war. He won’t be easy. What you embark on will not be a smooth journey.”  
“It’s been a walk in the bloody park so far.”  
  
“If he will let you, love him. Love him when he doesn’t love himself, which he will never do. I have seen him grow from a young boy into a bitter man with many regrets. I hope that you can help him to erase some of those regrets, or at the very least soothe them.”  
  
Ron nodded and put his hand out onto Severus’ leg.  
  
The room was still and silent. Glancing at the portrait showed that Dumbledore was gone.  
  
“Oh, nice. Goodbye to you too.” Ron rubbed his eye with his free hand and looked at the clock.  
  
He crooked his arm to cushion his face and put his head down. He’d said he’d wanted to be alone with Severus, but suddenly the room seemed very small and cold, and he was lonely.


	20. Chapter Twenty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every day is a test of their strength, willpower, and the desire to save their own skins >> In the end, they're each what the other both wants and needs.

_”Do it again.”  
  
Ron shook his head, turned away. Nothing was right. His arms moved clumsily in front of him, blurring in his vision. They were numb.  
  
“Ron. Come on, do it again.”  
  
He'd been here hundreds of times before. He'd done it again, he knew what would happen if he did. The terror that would course through his veins, the way Fred's laughter would ring in his ears and the desperate attempts of George, valiantly, to wrestle away the bear-cum-spider out of his grasp before he was traumatised for life.  
  
It was always too late. George never made it in time. And when Ron looked up, finding his arms empty and the spider gone, Fred stared at him with wide eyes before slowly dissipating in the breeze and blowing away.  
  
George's howl cracked through the scene like thunder._  
  
Ron flew to sitting in the bed, rigid with fear. His fingers clasped unfamiliar territory – good quality bed linen that was not his own. The room smelled wrong.  
  
It was the ticking of a clock from along the landing which made his pulse begin to calm and the sweat stop beading.  
  
Severus. He was at Severus' new house. He was sleeping in his bed, alone. Severus was at the hospital. Ron had been thrown out by the staff after a week of dirty protest. He'd had to admit, though, that his stench had been somewhat overpowering. Severus had woken, groggy and confused; it had only taken an hour and a half for him to shoot to fuming. He didn't want to be in St Mungo's, he wanted to be at home. He didn't need healing, he needed to be in his own space. Ron had to hand it to him, he was damned persuasive. He'd been just short of breaking him out on the sly when the Healers had revolted against him and packed him off.  
  
Ron hadn't been able to bear the thought of going back to The Burrow, not after the way things had been left with his mum and Harry. Neither of them had visited Severus' hospital room again. They'd sent no word. Charlie was the only family member who had come back. Charlie knew where he was and Ron supposed he'd told the others, but nobody had come looking for him and that suited him just fine.  
  
He was still smarting from the argument; from their words, so unfair and hypocritical that it made him want to scream with rage.  
  
He rubbed his face with a trembling hand and swallowed. Even though it was the middle of the night, the adrenalin pumping through his body told him it would be useless to try and go back to sleep. He swung his legs out of the bed and braced his hands on the edge of the mattress. Everything in the house smelt of Severus even though he'd barely lived there. Ron got to his feet and drifted to the window. The view was undisturbed and bathed in moonlight. It was beautiful but it made something within him ache.  
  
He threw Severus' dressing gown around his shoulders and belted it as he made his way to the kitchen, lighting candles as he went. He'd left his wand in the bedroom so some of them guttered and died. His magic was still weak when he was off-kilter. Feeling shattered was good enough reason for him to take a break from beating himself up about it, however.  
  
He filled the kettle and put it on to boil. He doubted he'd drink the tea but going through the motions often calmed him after the nightmare.  
  
Fred had never faded like that before. Ron had experienced the nightmare several times a year since the incident had happened. Fred had never blown away like dust. Ever. And George had never howled in agony before.  
Ron sighed. “Shit's catching up with you, even in your sleep.”  
  
He made his tea and took it into the sitting room. The first thing he'd done on returning to Severus' home was to clean up the blood wine on the kitchen floor. He'd scrubbed until his fingers felt raw, but there were still purple stains on the grouting.  
  
Sitting down on the sofa they'd been sharing before Severus had collapsed, Ron shivered.  
  
He looked at the clock. It was a whole six hours until he would be allowed back into the hospital and he'd barely slept. He could only remember feeling as weary in the cell, waiting for the next round. His eye caught the Prophet, screwed up and ripped on the floor - his opinion about Rita's third article made perfectly clear without the need for speech.  
  
Ron hadn't been brave enough to tell Severus what had happened. He'd managed to keep the paper away from him on days that they were discussed. Skeeter was onto the inappropriate nature of their relationship, with the twenty year age gap her main topic for disapproval.  
  
He'd thought about it himself a lot since the argument. He would have been lying if he said he'd never wondered how it would play out – if Severus would ever accept the age gap, or whether they'd ever have a truly equal relationship with one having so much more life experience than the other. What would they do, in the 'normal' world? If they lived together?  
  
Ron sipped his tea. He'd thought about that too.  
  
He'd thought far too much.  
  
They'd live together in the house he sat in, happy but fractious sometimes. They'd squabble over small things and have raging arguments over the big things. Severus would loathe his messiness and Ron would accuse him of being a pedantic old bastard. Ron would openly slag off Severus' book collection and Severus would never permit any Cannons memorabilia to be on public display.  
  
They'd have people round for dinner in the big kitchen, people they loved and whom they wanted to share in their love for one another. It was easy to imagine Severus standing quietly in the kitchen, wine glass in hand, shifting uncomfortably whilst others chatted around him. And Ron would approach him, slide an arm around his waist and kiss his lips, then whisper that he loved him. And after they were all gone, they'd go to bed and fuck, hard and meaningful, until they collapsed in a sated heap.  
  
Ron smiled to himself and shook his head. He was imagining a fantasy, giving way to it because it was beautiful to imagine. He didn't think it would ever become reality – it was more likely that they'd both become recluses and spend their lives locked away in the house.  
  
Either way, if Severus loved him, Ron thought he could cope with either scenario.  
  
If that was what came to be the lasting legacy of their captivity, Ron was more than ready to embrace it.  
  
***  
  
It was sunlight streaming through the open curtains which woke him next. He had slumped to the left on the sofa and his cheek was pressed into one of the seat cushions. It was so bright he was temporarily blind as he struggled to sit up. Every joint was stiff.  
  
When he finally got his eyes to focus he stared dumbly around the sitting room, looking at nothing in particular. He heard the clock ticking and listened to it, letting it lull him almost back to sleep. It began to chime and he counted them – twelve strikes – and then swore.  
  
He'd overslept. Half of the day had already gone and he'd not been with Severus for it. Immediately he felt horrible – ashamed of himself and worried that he might have missed something important.  
  
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Shit.” He muttered to himself and began to pace the length of the living room. He felt too flustered to do anything else even though he needed to shower and dress before going back to the hospital.  
  
His heart fluttered in his chest.  
  
***  
  
“I had a dream,” Severus muttered, staring at him with panicked eyes. “I had a dream you were gone... you were gone and you didn't come back to me. You just disappeared but I knew. I knew you would never come back.”  
  
Ron enveloped Severus in his arms and held on tight. “I'm here,” he whispered. He lifted one hand and stroked the dark, greasy hair of the wizard who was on complete bed rest. “I'm here now, and I'm not going anywhere. Well. Until they kick me out again.”  
  
Severus remained in hold for a few moments before slumping back in the bed. Ron hated the greyish pallor which still dominated his face – he had more colour than the night he'd collapsed, but not enough to convince anyone that he was well.  
  
“I'm sick of being here,” Severus muttered bitterly. “I'm losing my mind trapped in this room. We've both done our time on that score.”  
“Well I was stuck in hospital for months...” Ron made a face. “You're just trying to catch up.”  
“To your misery levels?”  
  
Ron snorted before he could stop himself and smiled. Severus gave him a begrudging wry smirk in response  
  
“This won't be forever,” he answered finally. “Soon you'll be home and back to normal and then we can...”  
  
His words hung in the air. He wasn't sure what Severus would want the end of the sentence to be.  
  
“I'd like that.” His voice had always been low, sometimes gentle, sometimes threatening, but in his convalescence Severus had taken on a slight gravel in his tone.  
  
It simply _did things_ to Ron's belly and groin.  
  
“I went to yours,” Ron went on sheepishly. “I didn't fancy having another fight with mum so I went to yours and...”  
“And what?”  
“I imagined what the future might hold.”  
“What did you envisage?”  
  
Ron looked down and rubbed on nothing at all on his jeans.  
  
“Ron?”  
“A future. Together. A life together in that house. Like adults.”  
“Well, that's good, we're both adults.”  
“I don't feel like I am.” Ron shook his head. “I feel like a kid playing at being an adult, being indulged because of the terrible things that have happened to him.”  
“Indulged by who? Certainly not your mother, or Harry. Or the rest of your family, it seems, with the exception of Charlie. And I don't think he's so much as indulging you but trusting you to know your own mind.”  
  
He closed his eyes. Ron didn't really know what he was saying or how he'd got to saying it.  
  
“I think... I mean...” He sighed. “Look. We both know that we've been through hell together. And I don't think what I want... what I hope _you_ want too... is too far of a leap in assumption. I just need to know that it's really what you want. That I'm really what you want.”  
  
He glanced up. Severus' expression was unreadable.  
  
“I don't know what I want.”  
“Shit-”  
“My turn. I'm talking. Let me finish.”  
  
Ron blushed in embarrassment.  
  
“I don't know what I want. For the first time in my life, I don't know. When I was a child, all I wanted was to go to school and escape my father. I got what I wanted. When I was a teenager, I wanted Lily Evans to love me, cherish me above all else. I didn't have that. Then I wanted to be powerful, to be more powerful than the man she did love so she'd change her mind and love me. I didn't get that either, because really, I was kidding myself. And then when I reached my twenties, all I wanted was for her to be safe, and then because I was forced to by... outside forces...” Dark eyes rolled to the currently empty portrait frame on the wall. “All I wanted was to protect Harry Potter until I was no longer of use. I got that wish and then it all went to hell because I never really presumed I'd live, but I did, but not in the way I could ever have imagined.”  
  
“If you think I need to hear right now how you've spent most of your life in love with a dead woman, you really don't know me that well, Severus.”  
“I do know you. I know how much it hurts you to hear it, but I said it anyway. Why? Because you are an adult. You are two years beyond our society's threshold for adulthood. Therefore I am talking to you as what you are – an adult. Had I sugar-coated it, I would have been indulging you and treating you like a child, which you clearly don't want.”  
  
Ron swallowed on a dry throat.  
  
“So if I am honest with you, saying that I don't know what I want, then you need to respect that. Be... _adult_ about it.”  
“Is there any point to this speech other than to make me feel like shit?” Ron asked hotly.  
“Yes. There is. Because I am trying to tell you that whilst I don't know what I now want from life, I do know that I want it to involve you, and I want you to help me build a new set of desires. Together.”  
“You couldn't have started with that?!” Ron exclaimed.  
“This is what grown ups do, Ronald. They have deep and meaningful conversations which take a while to establish a point.”  
“No, that's you, using ten words when two would do.”  
“Three is more appropriate, don't you think?”  
“You've lost me.”  
  
Ron blushed harder as Severus' eyebrows rose and the wizard stared at him.  
  
“Oh. Oh. Right.”  
“Those weren't the three words I was thinking of.”  
“Stop it, now you're just making fun of me.”  
  
The deep, gruff laugh which Severus let out made Ron start to tingle. Thin, cool fingers tangled with his own and squeezed.  
  
“Stop testing me. Stop giving me chances to run. If you want what you dreamed of, then stop giving me the opportunity to turn you down.”  
“Fine.” Ron leant forward, putting their faces close together. “Then what I want is you, and you damn well want me, and we're both adults, so we'll have what we want and fuck anyone who doesn't understand why.”  
“Agreed.”  
  
They kissed. Ron felt something loosen in his chest.  
  


* * *

  
  
There was one thing that Severus couldn't get out of his mind. Since he'd regained lucid consciousness, he'd barely managed to think about anything else. It was that he had so nearly missed his chance to show someone he cared about how he felt – again. It made him nauseous.  
  
He'd ample time to think about it over and over again whilst lying in his hospital bed. There was very little else to do whilst he was confined to the hell of the hospital.  
  
He had thought primarily of Ron, but also the others in his life that he had missed his chance to talk to. Not Lily – he'd prostrated himself for her, bared himself irrevocably naked and vulnerable to her mercy and she had walked away. Foremost in his mind after Ron was the woman that he'd not thought of for years until his mind had thrown her into a dream whilst he was stuck in a cell, wondering if he was about to die.  
  
 _Jennifer._  
  
It felt cathartic to say it in his mind. Because he never had whilst they'd been together. He had to be very careful not to even think her name, to store any embellished memories which might give her away to people who really had no business in knowing who she was.  
  
It hadn't saved her, but at least he'd tried. She'd never asked anything of him, only given; he'd taken and in the end acted as her executioner, albeit from a distance. It was not an easy thing to bear – the knowledge that there would be more than one person still alive if it were not for him.  
  
But that was where Ron was different. Ron was alive _because_ of him, and he was not going to let that slide. He'd often scorned people who said they felt 'blessed', but he'd come to terms with the fact that he seemed to have finally been blessed with the opportunity to say what he felt, at the right time, to the right person and that life would be better for it.  
  
Of course, that didn't mean he wouldn't be terribly bad at expressing his emotions and or manage not to be idiotic whilst doing it.  
  
Again, for the first time, he thought he'd found someone who wouldn't mind that one little bit – who might even love him more for it.  
  
***  
  
“I thought you weren't speaking to one another?” Severus asked, leaning against the kitchen worktop for support.  
“We're not.” Ron shifted his weight between his feet. “But she turned up with enough food to feed an army and I didn't stop her from leaving it here.”  
“Did you say thank you?” Severus asked with a sigh.  
  
Ron looked guiltily away and instead wandered over to pull the kitchen blind up. “I cut the grass. It was getting a bit long, so...”  
“Thank you.”  
“And I cleaned a bit, but not because it was dirty but because it just felt so unlived in.”  
“Of course it does, nobody's lived in it. I wasn't here for very long and to be honest, I'm not a nester. It needs the touch of somebody who loves it. Or at least, who can tolerate such tasks. That's definitely not me.”  
  
“Lucky for you I've been lumbered with painting for years. It's shit being so tall, you know?”  
  
Severus laughed and slowly made his way to sit down at the table. He hated how feeble he felt – how much the journey home from the hospital had tired him out. He was by no means well, but there had been no point in him taking up a St Mungo's bed when his own was perfectly suitable.  
  
Ron had sworn to stop him from doing too much but he still had to attend the hospital for twice weekly check ups for the time being. He'd insisted that Ron stay at home for the moment of discharge, instead allowing them both to properly look forward to the moment of homecoming. He wasn't disappointed.  
  
There had been something so soothing about someone launching themselves at him, wrapping him in their arms and expressing genuine joy to see him. Severus wasn't sure he'd ever experienced something so tender.  
  
“So... why don't you go and have a lie down, and I'll heat something up for dinner and then we can... I dunno. Whatever you want to do.”  
“I want to sit. With you. And have a glass of wine – no arguments – and talk.”  
“We're talking now.”  
“I was hoping for one of those deep and meaningful conversations again... the sort where, by the end, we both know where we stand, and neither of us feels out of place saying that we love the other, because that will be so ridiculously obvious that we would be fools for trying to perpetuate anything else.”  
  
Ron stared at him, looking slightly dumbstruck with an open mouth.  
  
“We could do that,” he said finally, when he'd gathered his wits. “Sure.”  
“You had something else in mind?” Severus frowned.  
  
A lazy, filthy smile lit up Ron's face. “Kinda.”  
“I'll have you know I'm an old man with a questionable heart.”  
“And I'm a fucked up teenager who can't see a glass of red wine without thinking about the night that he killed a man, and enjoyed watching him die.”  
“You had to drag it down. That was me attempting to be playful.”  
  
Ron laughed and rubbed his forehead nervously. “Right.”  
“Come here?” Severus bid him over with his hand. “Come to me.”  
“Back to the sex?”  
“No, that would have been come _for_ me, you filthy child.”  
  
Ron was smiling as he sauntered across the kitchen.  
  
“Promise me something,” Severus asked, taking hold of both of Ron's hands.  
“What? Oh, hello-”  
  
Severus pulled Ron close and pressed his face into his lower belly, locking his arms tightly around his backside.  
  
“That you'll always come to me.”  
“Always.”  
  
Severus felt a lump building in his throat. He had a particular affinity for that word.  
  
He turned his cheek further into Ron's body and inhaled the scent of him. What he held, he had. He had no doubt that Ron was wholly his. That he would not be abandoned. He'd never had that before.  
  
Safety, somehow, had come from being stolen from a recovering life. From being crammed into a filthy cell and tormented daily.  
  
It had brought him a life which was unrecognisable.  
  
“Thank you, Ron.”  
“Any time.”  
  
Gentle, hot fingers stroked his hair. Severus closed his eyes.  
  
 _-fin-_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I am so proud of this story. It consistently gets amazing comments about the strength of the writing and that means a hell of a lot to me. I think this is the roughest ride I've ever given these two as a couple and I'm proud of how I kept their story arc going over about a year and a half (can't believe it's been that long!)
> 
> Thank you, for staying with me, and them, and I hope you agree that this is the peaceful, loving end they deserved.
> 
> Next time, as ever,  
> Starstruck1986


End file.
